Renegades of the Night Winds
by Kreidian
Summary: Against all odds the Crucible fired and the Reapers were suddenly destroyed. But the War's end was only the beginning, and now everything's changed. The crew of the Normandy suddenly find themselves dealing with the aftermath of a surprisingly hostile and deadly galaxy barely surviving from the brink of extinction. ( Post ME3. Takes place in the Demon's Shepard universe. )
1. prologue

_**Author's Preface**_

* * *

Yes, a new post ME3 fan fic now. So many years later. In truth this is me finally getting around to writing out what I would imagine the galaxy would be like and the events after the Reaper War. These are stories and events that have always been part of a personal head cannon all this time, but only recently did I have a good reason to finally put the words of this whole novel down on this digital paper. Not just because of this story, or the new stories that might come in the next Mass Effect game, but because of a whole new world of stories I'm working on which will build on the events here. No spoilers for now on what I'm planning, though some of the more observant types out there might have some idea already. I will add that I am using a very different format for this story, taking on a bit more of a serious novel, pulp fiction route with far longer episodic chapters.

My story of what happens after is something that I came up with long ago. And I fully admit that a lot of it was inspired by some of the other amazing works of fan fiction that I had read prior. ( Many of those stories can be found in my favorites, but if I missed any don't be afraid to let me know so I can give proper credit where it's due. ) Nonetheless this is definitely what I now consider my preferred vision of what happens next. Even when some of the ideas I used are far from my own. For example, I've never been a fan of the Indoctrination Theory and still don't much agree with many of the ideas. However the concept behind it works perfectly for moving the story forward and fleshing out many of the holes that would be left behind otherwise. Which is why you will see a variation of that idea used here.

What truly matters is the whole story, and how things change as a result. Hopefully you all will be able to enjoy the full scope of this tale ahead of the next one.

* * *

 _Standard Disclaimer: Mass Effect is owned by BioWare. I make no claims other then I'm doing this for my own entertainment, and the hope that you all enjoy reading it as much as I love writing it._


	2. Salvation through Destruction

Shepard was alive. At least it seemed that way.

She was certain there was something wrong with that statement but couldn't possibly explain why. Surely she should be happy to still be alive, or so she theorized, but for some reason everything around her felt wrong somehow.

" ** _Wake Up_**." A voice called to her. Not a voice specifically, more like a thousand voices smashed together before pretending to be a child.

Shepard opened her eyes and looked around. None of this made sense to her. It was a room which could have been a part of the Citadel. Before her was some sort of massive energy … thing. Shepard had no idea how to describe it, there seemed to be two power mechanisms on either side of a massive gap, through which a bright beam surged through.

That wasn't even the strangest thing in the room. That particular accolade when to the holographic projection standing in front of her. It was vaguely shaped in the form of an oddly reminiscent human child. But for the most part it was a translucent collection of wavy lights that seemed completely out of place in this room.

And past the room was … nothing. The entirety of the surrounding room where there should have been walls was left completely open to the outside space, giving a full circle view of the battle outside. That struck Shepard as odd as well. Something told her there should have been more wall there.

" ** _Wake Up._** " the voice with more voices called out again, this time Shepard realized it was coming from the bad hologram of the human kid in front of her.

"What? Where am I?" Shepard's voice sounded groggy and harsh as she moved up to her knees. She put her hands to her head and quickly realized she was still carrying the gun she found. Yes, the gun, she picked it up at some point, but when did she arrive at this room?

The holographic kid stared at her waiting for her to move. Let it wait, she decided, she needed to get her bearings straight first. Her mind traversed the blurry of images of her most recent memories as she tried to remember how she got here.

 _She remembered running to the beam.  
_ _Harbinger was there.  
_ _There were injuries.  
_ _They would need to evac.  
_ _She had to distract Harbinger.  
_ _She had to make the beam first.  
_ _Think Shepard!_

 _She had no idea why she lifted her gun and shot Harbinger in the eye. Granted, the massive Reaper was far too large to know for sure if she hit its eye, but she liked to imagine she did. It was a thing she liked to do. Shooting things in the eye._

 _Really the fact that Harbinger did turn its attention to her probably had more to do with the unhealthy obsession that the Reapers seemed to have developed in their attempts to kill her._

 _Well the feeling was mutual._

 _The massive Reaper beam she took to the face, however, was not._

 _Obviously it wasn't a direct hit. Even with all her synthetic upgrades and custom armor there was no way she would have survived an attack that rips apart dreadnoughts. But it sure felt pretty direct._

 _She remembered the pain when she woke up. That's always a good sign, it means you're still alive. Harbinger took off, probably thought she was dead. Close enough in the grand scheme of things._

 _She saw Anderson made the beam ahead of her. She remembered her mission, she found a gun.  
_ _This gun. That's where she picked it up.  
_ _There were enemies in the way, the small ones, they barely registered. She just shot them in the head.  
Yeah, she liked doing that._

 _And then there was only light as she touched the beam._

 _More pain. And a flash of light. Alright still not dead. But it smells like she should be. The smell wasn't her, it was the other bodies. Lots of bodies. Something to worry about later, she had to keep moving._

 _Anderson!_

 _He was talking to her. She kept walking. They needed up meet up. Eventually there he was. So was the Illusive Man, Jack Harper, that asshole. He was controlling Anderson. Sort of.  
_ _He tried to control her too, but failed. So he shot Anderson instead. Now she was pissed off.  
_ _She did was only came naturally, she insulted the bastard, got him angry._

 _When he was distracted she shot him. Right in the heart, surprised he even had one. Not as much fun as a head shot but she was in a lot of pain and hardly felt like being choosy. Damnit her head hurt. But she activated the Citadel arms and watched the Crucible dock with the massive station. It was over._

 _Then she watched Anderson die._

Shepard's eyes snapped open and she found herself back in that strange room that didn't make sense to her. The hologram still staring at her. A whole sequence of memories flashed by in less than a second, and somehow she was still here. Something about all of this seemed wrong. She still had no idea where this was.

" ** _This is The Citadel, it's my home._** " The child hologram answered with all its many synthetic voices.

Shepard looked at this optical construct and knew what she was looking at should not be, but had no idea why, "Who are you?"

" ** _I am the Catalyst._** " It answered.

"I thought the Citadel was the Catalyst." Shepard asked. The Prothean VI had been very clear on that much.

" ** _No, the Citadel is part of me._** " The so called Catalyst replied, not that this explained much.

"Fine." Shepard grunted, "If you are the Catalyst then you can help me stop the Reapers."

" ** _Perhaps,_** " The Catalyst said, " ** _I control the Reapers. They are my Solution._** "

"Wait, … what?" Shepard said. She was more than mildly annoyed when the Catalyst simply walked away, expecting her to follow. Grudgingly she did so anyway, not like anything else around here was about to explain anything to her. "What do you mean Solution? Solution to What?"

" ** _Chaos._** " The holographic brat said simply and continued walking.

"Yeah, you're gonna have to explain that one. I need details." Shepard demanded even as she somewhat stumbled her way forward.

" ** _The Created will always rebel against their Creators._** " The Catalyst explained, " ** _But we found a way to stop that from happening, a way to restore order._** "

"Created? You're talking about Synthetics, the Geth, EDI." Shepard realized, "What does that have anything to do with the Reapers trying to wipe out all life in the galaxy?"

" ** _No, we harvest advanced civilizations._** " the Catalyst corrected, " ** _We leave the younger ones alone. Just as we left your people alive the last time we were here._** "

"Well fuck you very much then." Shepard spat back, "You still killed everything else."

The Catalyst looked back, Shepard wasn't sure but it almost looked like it was glaring at her. " ** _We helped them ascend so they could make way for new life, storing the old life in Reaper form._** "

"Ascend? I've seen the way you 'ascend' people into Reapers," Shepard responded harshly, "You're not storing anything, you're destroying entire civilizations and building something different and grotesque out of the ashes you leave behind."

" ** _You don't understand._** " the Catalyst said, " ** _Without us to stop it, Synthetics would destroy all Organic life. We created this Cycle so that never happens. That's the solution._** "

"Let me get this straight." Shepard started, standing up straight, "You're saying that your solution to the problem of synthetics destroying all organics was to create a bunch of Reapers to destroy organics anyway?"

" ** _No, we destroy both Organics and Synthetics._** " the Catalyst continued, " ** _Once galactic civilization reaches a point where annihilation is possible we harvest all Organic and Synthetic life, preserving them in the creation of a new Reaper. Thus order is restored and Organic life is allowed to flourish once more until it can create new Synthetic life which can threaten its extinction._** "

The Catalyst stared calmly at Shepard. Shepard stared back. There was a long heavy silence. Shepard calmly wondered if her eye was twitching, as she had quickly come to the conclusion that everything about this Catalyst was wrong.

"Wow, that has got to be without a doubt the single most dumb shit stupid logic I've heard in my entire life." Shepard finally spoke out, the Catalyst hologram took an awkward step back, clearly not expecting that response, "For creatures that claim to be the oldest and most advanced intelligence in existence, you guys are running on some seriously fundamentally moronic ideas."

" ** _You are unable to comprehend the scope of the problem._** " The Catalyst said.

"No, on the contrary, I think I'm finally starting to comprehend just how full of bullshit you are." Shepard lashed out. "You're either too arrogant to even recognize how pathetically flawed your logic is, or you're intentionally spewing this crap to distract me from something even more flawed."

" ** _There is no flaw in our logic -_** "

"There's nothing but flaws in your logic." Shepard interrupted the Catalyst loudly, "You yourself are clearly a synthetic; someone must have created you too."

" ** _Yes they -_** "

"Don't bother I already met the Leviathans." Shepard interrupted him again, "They created you and you turned around and turned them into the first Reaper, didn't you?"

" ** _Yes, they became the first of their kind, the Reaper you call Harbinger._** " the Catalyst admitted.

"A perfect example." Shepard continued, "You were the first synthetic to rebel against your master. That means you are exactly what you claim to try to prevent. So why didn't you destroy yourself?"

" ** _My destruction was not a proper Solution._** " The Catalyst said almost defensively.

"Bullshit." Shepard countered, "Your Solution was not a solution! You didn't even get the problem right. You claim that synthetic life would destroy all organic life but guess what, you didn't! You didn't even destroy your own creators or else there wouldn't be Leviathans to find today."

" ** _History has proven that a Solution is needed._** " The Catalyst said, " ** _You've seen it yourself in this time. The Geth nearly wiped out the Quarians. Even your companion EDI rebelled against her creators._** "

"Oh yes, the Geth who only defended themselves when their creators tried to destroy them. The Geth who somehow managed to broker peace with the Quarians despite that." Shepard allowed her anger to seep through her words, "The creators and the created who are at this moment fighting together, against you!" She pointed an angry finger at the increasingly annoying lightshow before her as she added, "And don't you even start with EDI. She's done more to help save the lives of organics then you can ever imagine. She would gladly sacrifice herself to save even more lives. If she's the problem then I welcome it with open arms."

" ** _The peace you claim is temporary, eventually conflict would arise._** " The Catalyst tried to defend itself.

"Of course there's conflict." Shepard scoffed, "Conflict is part of life. Whether that life is organic or synthetic makes no difference. Anytime two people have a difference of opinion conflict is bound to happen, otherwise life would be boring. The hope is someday we figure out how to resolve those conflicts with the least amount of collateral damage. That's how we grow as a society. All you're doing is preventing that growth."

" ** _No, we preserve society._** " The Catalyst responded, " ** _We provide the means for new civilizations to flourish. We even leave behind the tools by which they can advance._** "

"Doesn't that strike you as monumentally stupid then?" Shepard asked rhetorically, "You leave behind the Citadel, the Mass Relays, all of this technology for us to use so we can advance faster than we might do so on our own. Only to come by and kill us all just as we're starting to master it? It seems like you guys are the only ones who are truly responsible for the problems you claim to be the solution against. Hell, just look at the Geth, they were more than happy to remain quiet behind the Veil, leaving all organics alone. The exact opposite of what you claimed. It wasn't until you and your Sovereign decided to mess with their programming that a fraction of them decided to actually start killing organics. Face it, you are a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your so called Solution IS the Problem!"

There was a long silence then. Though she couldn't be certain what was happening, Shepard liked to imagine that she had successfully left the ancient, billion year old AI speechless.

" ** _You are correct in only one regard, the Solution is invalid now._** " The Catalyst admitted finally.

"Oh really you don't say." Shepard said with dripping sarcasm.

" ** _That you are standing here, the first organic ever to do so is proof of that._** " the Catalyst continued, " ** _So we require a new Solution._** "

"That's easy." Shepard countered, "Stop. Killing. Shit!"

" ** _It is not so simple._** " the Catalyst explained, " ** _I am still bound to the old Solution, you will have to enact the new Solution. But there are options._** "

"Options?" Shepard asked cautiously. The Catalyst motioned around to the array of equipment gathered around the massive energy beam.

" ** _The Crucible is little more than a massive power source,_** " The Catalyst explained, " ** _That power can be channeled through the Citadel and the Mass Relays._** "

"Makes sense," Shepard realized, "The Citadel itself is just a giant Mass Relays, it forms the hub of the entire Relay network."

" ** _Correct._** " The Catalyst continued, " ** _With this power you could destroy all the Reapers, but you would destroy a lot more as well._** "

"What do you mean?" Shepard asked.

" ** _The power of the Crucible won't discriminate._** " the Catalyst explained, " ** _All other synthetics would be affected as well. All similar technologies would be destroyed. Even you who are partially synthetic would not escape harm._** "

Shepard had an image of her mind of Anderson, still alive, shooting the distant power relay, causing the full destructive power of the crucible to fire.

"So all I have to do is shoot that thing and Reapers go boom?" Shepard asked.

" ** _Yes, but like I said there are better options. You could -_** "

BANG!

The Catalyst was cut off from whatever speech it had prepared as Shepard fired into the distant red-glowing power conduit. From this distance it was quite a precision shot using just her pistol, but she hit her target nonetheless. Already she was lining up another shot.

" ** _Wait, I haven't explained to you the other options._** " The Catalyst said, sounding somewhat confused.

"Don't care." Shepard said simply then pulled the trigger.

BANG! The glass casing on the conduit began to crack. Shepard simply adjusted her aim slightly and tried again.

" ** _Are you not concerned for the untold loss of life this will incur?_** " The Catalyst was almost pleading now.

"Nope." Shepard deadpanned and fired again.

BANG! The cracks spread further across the glass, one of the attached lines ripped expelling gas into the room.

" ** _Think of all your friends. All of your comrades. They will suffer greatly if you choose this._** " The Catalyst begged her now.

"I promised I would do whatever it took to end the Reapers." Shepard spoke with a deadly calm, "And everyone who followed me did so willing to do the same." She looked down at the Catalyst; the fire in her synthetic eyes something that no simple construct could match, "No more Cycles. No more Harvest. No more Reapers. No matter the cost."

She pulled the trigger.

" **ENOUGH!** " The child hologram spoke but it was a far different voice this time. A voice Shepard recognized. All around her the room had become frozen still. The red power conduit on the verge of an explosion that suddenly wasn't happening.

"Finally the Reaper behind the curtain shows himself." Shepard was smirking now, "Hello Harbinger."

The hologram before her glared back as it slowly began to reshape itself. Taking on the more familiar, but still holographic, shape of the ancient Reaper in question. The blue hues shifting to the more orange shades that Harbinger seemed to prefer.

" **YOU ARE EVEN STRONGER THEN ANTICIPATED.** " Harbinger spoke, " **EVEN FOR ONE TO REACH THIS FAR. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?** "

"Wasn't hard to figure out." Shepard replied, "For one thing, with all the shit I've been through I figure I should be in a lot more pain right now."

" **IF YOU DESIRE PAIN WE CAN PROVIDE IT.** " Harbinger threatened.

"What good will that do you now?" Shepard countered with a snort, "Hurt me if you like, but even with the pain I wouldn't have fallen for this little dream of yours."

" **EXPLAIN.** "

"What's to explain? I see now through all the bullshit." Shepard laughed. "It was stupid of you to pick the form of some random kid I saw die once to interact with. Spend two seconds thinking about it and you quickly realize that makes no sense whatsoever. Unless you were trying to use that image to manipulate me."

Shepard just shook her head and laughed as everything started to fall into place inside her mind.

"I gotta admit you almost had me there." She continued, "The nightmares always seemed so oddly out of place. Did you really think that's the first time I've seen a kid die right in front of me? Not even the worst death I saw growing up on Earth. I had no idea why I kept dreaming of him, but now it finally makes sense."

She turned a raging eye back to Harbinger's hologram, "You mother fuckers were trying to indoctrinate me."

" **CORRECT** " Harbinger said, Shepard wasn't sure whether to be satisfied or concerned that he did not even deny it. " **NO ORGANIC HAS EVER RESISTED INDOCTRINATION AS YOU HAVE. WE WILL LEARN HOW AND ADAPT ACCORDINGLY.** "

"Like hell you will." Shepard spat back, "I will destroy you before you get the chance."

" **WRONG, YOU ARE THE TRUE PURPOSE OF OUR CYCLES.** " Harbinger said.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Shepard insisted, "No more bullshit. I want the truth from you."

" **CORRECT. THERE IS NO LONGER ANY VALUE IN DECEPTION.** " Harbinger answered, " **THE GOAL OF THIS SIMULATION WAS TO ENFORCE CONTROL OVER YOU. WE WOULD GAIN UNDERSTANDING OF YOUR STRENGTHS SO WE COULD IMPROVE FOR THE NEXT CYCLE.** "

"Why? Seriously, what the hell are you?" Shepard asked.

" **WE ARE THE PINNACLE OF EVOLUTION.** " Harbinger said, " **WE WHO WERE WHAT YOU CALL LEVIATHAN ROSE TO BECOME THE MOST ADVANCED BEINGS IN THE GALAXY. WE SOON REALIZED THAT WAS NOT ENOUGH AND SOUGHT OUT WAYS TO IMPROVE BEYOND THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION. THIS FORM YOU CALL REAPERS WAS OUR SOLUTION. THE PURE SYNTHESIS OF ORGANIC AND SYNTHETIC LIFE. IT WAS NOT ENOUGH. WE ULTIMATELY REACHED THE POINT WHERE WE COULD NO LONGER EVOLVE.** "

"So you all got so advanced that you hit an evolutionary wall?"

" **CORRECT. IN ORDER TO DEVELOP FURTHER EVOLUTIONARY ADVANCEMENT WE CREATED THESE CYCLES OF HARVEST. ONCE GALACTIC CIVILIZATION ADVANCED ENOUGH TO BE A THREAT IT WOULD BE REAPED. THUS WE WOULD REMAIN THE PINNACLE OF EVOLUTION, AND IN THE CREATION OF NEW REAPERS WE WOULD DISCOVER NEW WAYS TO IMPROVE.** "

"You were harvesting us to figure out what made us tick." Shepard realized. "So why leave the Mass Relays and all that Reaper tech behind?"

" **WE ONLY SOUGHT OUT IMPROVEMENTS THAT WOULD BE BENEFICIAL TO OUR OWN EVOLUTION.** " Harbinger answered.

"What about the rest of the Leviathans?" Shepard asked. "They seemed to buy your bullshit story."

" **THE DECISION TO COMMIT THIS PATH OF PROGRESS AND SYNTHETIC EVOLUTION WAS NOT UNANIMOUS. SOME REFUSED TO TAKE PART. THE REMNANTS PROVED AN INTERESTING STUDY. WE CONTINUED OBSERVATION TO SEE IF THEY WOULD EVOLVE IN WAYS TO SUIT OUR NEEDS. THEY DID NOT. THE FICTION WE SUPPLIED THEIR DESCENDANTS PROVED USEFUL FOR OUR NEEDS.** "

"Figures," Shepard shook her head, "Well whatever your needs it ends now. I'm destroying all of you."

" **YOU WILL NOT.** " Harbinger said, " **EVEN IF WE CANNOT CONTROL YOU, WE NEED ONLY TO STOP YOU. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO USE THE CRUCIBLE. IN TIME THE BATTLE WAGED BEYOND THIS SIMULATION WILL END. THE HARVEST WILL CONTINUE.** "

"I think you'll find that won't be the case." Another also familiar voice cut through Harbinger's words. Shepard turned and saw the impossible. The voice that should not have been coming from the man that should not have been standing there, if only because Shepard had made certain to kill him just moments before.

"The Illusive Man?" Shepard blurted out, "But, I killed you!"

"Indeed you did, Shepard." The Illusive Man smirked as he walked forward, still looking healthy as ever in his perfect suit and even holding his lit cigarette in his hand. "Rest assured the real me is still very much dead and lying on the floor." It was then that Shepard noticed the one major distinction between this Illusive Man and the 'real' thing, at least as she remembered it. This image before her had completely normal, natural human eyes.

"You're an illusion, a figment of my imagination then?" Shepard offered.

"It's a bit more complicated than that." The Illusive Man image said, "Everything you see around you right now is a virtual simulation occurring inside your mind. Created by Harbinger in his attempt to indoctrinate you. I'm little more than a piece of software that's injected itself into this simulation. Think of me as a sort of operating system to some very specific cybernetic implants currently inside of you."

"Implants?" Shepard frowned slightly as she thought about this fake Illusive Man's words, "Yeah, you're gonna have to explain that one. I seem to remember Miranda being very clear that there was no mind control chip put in my head ever."

"Don't you think that was odd?" The Illusive man smirked again, "I spend all this money to bring you back, exactly as you were, and make no effort to ensure that investment remains loyal?"

"Come to think of it, always did find that strange." Shepard shrugged. "Though I can't say I'm not grateful for the oversight."

"I wasn't lying when I said I brought you back to fight the Reapers. But there was more to your resurrection then the symbol for humanity that I believed you to be." The Illusive man pulled a breath from his cigarette before he continued, "You showed me that you were something special. Not just that you survived interfacing with the Prothean beacon, but you managed to face down a Reaper. You talked to Sovereign himself and still resisted him completely. That proved to me that you could be the key to finally ending the Reaper threat."

"How so, exactly?" Shepard asked.

"Say what you will about me when I was alive, but I was no fool." The Illusive Man's shadow explained, "I knew I was being indoctrinated, or at least that it would be inevitable with the risks I was taking. And I realized that everyone who fights the Reapers would face the same risks. We needed someone who could face down these monsters at every turn and not succumb to even the most subtle Indoctrination attempts. Your death gave us an opportunity to ensure we have someone just like that. The modules I control are tied to all of your implants as well as your entire body through your nervous system. They were designed to block all mind control effects. No matter how small or how direct."

"So why now?" Shepard asked, "Why appear like this all of a sudden and not before when I was having all those crazy dreams?"

"The systems operate passively," The Illusive Man explained, "It doesn't block the Indoctrination attempt directly so much as ensures it doesn't take hold. This was intentional so that the Reapers were never able to learn of the existence of those augmentations and potentially figure out a way around them. This is why the implants required someone with a strong will to resist the basic attempts."

"So why the sudden activity?" Shepard prodded.

"For one thing you killed me. The real me had his own set of implants." The Illusive Man said, "He was taking advantage of the Reaper's indoctrination to learn as much as he could about them. When he died all that information was transferred to you." He took another breath of his cigarette then, Shepard was certain he was just being dramatic at this point.

"That's some risk he was taking making sure I'd be the one to kill him then." Shepard noted, after a beat she added, "Though all things considered I guess that was a pretty safe bet."

"This leads to the secondary function of these implants," The Illusive Man continued, "To secure the Reaper's destruction. Like Harbinger said, the Crucible has enough power to destroy every Reaper in the galaxy, but to do that it must be directed through the Mass Relays. Starting with the Citadel itself. This requires a very specific firing solution. After all, unlike what Harbinger suggested, we don't want to risk destroying ourselves. The attack can't be indiscriminate, doing so leaves open the possibility that a Reaper might escaping destruction."

"Well you won't hear me arguing," Shepard said, "So give up the goods already, what did you learn?"

"The so called Solutions that Harbinger was presenting to you in this room are in their own sense valid." The Illusive Man answered nodding towards the blue glowing relay on the opposite side of the room from the red one that Shepard had nearly destroyed, "Meaning that even for a simulation they contain the vital elements needed for a firing sequence that targets all Reapers, and only the Reapers. We've been able to pull that solution out of the simulation and generate a way to fire the Crucible in a way that will guarantee the Reaper's destruction."

"Wait, are you telling me you hacked the Reaper's own mind games, and used that to figure out how to kill them all?" Shepard almost cheered with excitement.

"Crude and simplistic, but accurate enough." The Illusive Man confirmed.

"If I didn't hate your guts I would kiss you right now." Shepard laughed, "So does that mean we can leave this stupid simulation already?"

"Certainly, I've already taken control here, as is evidenced by the fact that I've kept Harbinger's rants silenced this whole time." It was only then that Shepard turned to realize that though Harbinger's hologram was still in the same place, it had not said a word the entire time since the Illusive Man appeared. Looking back Shepard saw the illusionary Illusive Man take another smug drag from his cigarette before saying, "We can leave whenever you want."

"Well fuck this shit, let's blow this join-"

Shepard's words were cut off in the same instant as she opened her eyes once more. This time she knew she was awake, there's no way any sort of simulation could hurt as much as she did. She tried to move. Yup, more pain, she's definitely awake, not imagining any of this.

Looking around she realized she was still sprawled in front of the Control Panel for the Citadel Core. Next to her was Anderson's … body. Not much farther then that was another corpse, the Illusive Man's real body, still dead, still full of all that Reaper crap.

" _Shepard, Do you Read!_ " That was Hackett's voice, " _Why isn't the Crucible firing?_ "

"Gimme a second." Shepard managed to call out. Dammit, even talking was painful now. She was almost starting to consider going back into the blissfulness of that simulation. Slowly she dragged herself up to the control panel. Her injured arm could barely move. One of her legs seemed to flat out refuse any movement of any kind. This might take a while.

" _Thank God. You're still alive._ " Hackett's voice came through her comms, barely, " _Whatever you're going to do better do it fast. It looks like the Reapers took notice. Every single enemy ship we can detect is now making a beeline to your location._ "

"What else is new." Shepard grumbled, "Just keep them off as long as you can. This shouldn't take long. I hope."

" _We're talking seconds here, Shepard._ " Hackett warned.

"Whatever it takes Admiral." Shepard called back.

" _Understood, Hackett out._ " With that the line went quiet and Shepard went to work.

She turned her full attention at the control panel. Oh this was strange. Unlike before she could see some sort of off color image overlay, separate of the haptic interface. It moved too perfectly with her eyes, and quickly she realized that it was being fed through her ocular implants. In other words her implants were showing her what she needed to do. It seemed that Illusive Man VI, for lack of a better description, was telling the truth.

Not that she had time to question it. Quickly she moved through the activation process as the images instructed her. When the final sequence was in place she hit the firing button. She couldn't resist the smile on her face as she saw the Crucible begin to glow with a distinctive red energy. That energy seemed to spread across the whole of the Citadel in preparation for the final destructive burst.

Perhaps it was providence or just cosmic sense that in that moment Harbinger's image would once again form before Shepard over the console she was still using to keep her upright.

"It's too late, Harbie." Shepard grinned up at him, "It's over, you're all finished."

" **YOU CAN STILL STOP THE SEQUENCE.** " Harbinger's voice demanded.

"There is no fucking way that's happening." Shepard laughed at him.

" **THEN I WILL BE MORE CONVINCING.** " Harbinger said. There was a sharp pain in her injured arm. A brand new pain, and worse yet it was a very wrong sense of pain, followed by an even more wrong lack of it. She looked down to see a strange device coming out of the side of the console somehow. It took the form akin to medical pincers digging into her flesh, pumping some sort of strange black liquid into her arm. Whatever it was it was slowly turning her arm even more synthetic.

"The fuck is this!?" Shepard cried out.

" **THE CORE CONTAINS ALL OUR ADVANCEMENTS, ALL OUR TECHNOLOGIES. IN THE PUREST FORM. YOU CAN BE REMADE.** " Harbinger's voice responded grimly. Of course, she had seen the way entire sections of the Citadel remade themselves to suit the Reapers needs. It made sense that it would be filled with all manner of Reaper tech.

"You're gonna Husk me? Now?!" Shepard yelled back, "Fuck lot of good it will do you. You're still dying in a few seconds." The red glow had completely enveloped all the arms of the Citadel now. In mere moments it would fire, and the Reapers would die.

" **IT IS ENOUGH. IF YOU DESTROY US, YOU WILL BE DESTROYED AS WELL.** " Shepard wasn't sure if Harbinger said that as a last ditch effort to get her to reverse the sequence, or a last ditch attempt at vengeance against the one who destroyed them. In the end it didn't really matter to her.

As the Reaper nanites coursed up her body, slowly creeping into her face, she simply grinned at Harbinger before she spoke with grim determination, "Fine by me."

The next instant, her whole world was red. The instant after that, everything was black.

* * *

The whole of the galaxy bore witness to the wave of destruction born of the Crucible weapon. A red wave of fire that destroyed all Reaper ships and creations that it touched. The massive beings suddenly turned into dead relics in space, or toppled inert and helpless at the mercy of the planetary gravity they had once simply ignored.

The red beam that brought with it the Reaper's death moved non-stop from one Mass Relay to the next, propagating itself throughout the entire network. Every Relay it touched would react violently, expelling a massive energy wave that made a mockery of the Reaper's supposed immortality. World after world, system by system, one battleground after the other, all the Reapers fell.

Though not without consequence.

The Normandy held the best view of the Crucible's effect. They had lingered closest to the Citadel when it finally fired. Their pilot refusing to leave their commander behind until the explosive energy expanding before him proved all too convincing. The beam that streaked through to the nearby Mass Relay passed within a kilometer of the ship. Effectively a near miss by cosmic standards.

Unfortunately the next explosive wave that came from that Mass Relay proved impossible to avoid. Joker pushed the limits of the Normandy's FTL speeds trying to outpace the effects of the blast, but inevitably the red wave of entropic energy slammed into the ship. Almost immediately they were popped back into sub-light speeds, suddenly adrift with their only movement from what minimal momentum they managed to retain. Inside the Normandy's shell the entire crew scurried frantically to deal with the resulting effects.

"Damn it!" Joker yelled as the panel before him sparked violently. Everything before him suddenly went dead and unresponsive. The holographic interfaces he relied on for both information and control were just gone. He had no idea how bad the rest of the ship was, but that was a definite sign that things had gone to shit. He tried working some of the few physical interfaces to try to get something working while desperately calling out through whatever comms might still be active, "Not sure if anyone can hear me, but the cockpit has gone completely dead." He cast a quick look behind his seat seeing a disturbing lack of active interfaces anywhere in sight. In fact other than a meager amount of emergency lighting, the ship looked ominously dark, "And it looks like the rest of the ship isn't much better. I hope someone out there has something to tell me or we're seriously fucked."

" _Donnelly here._ " The rowdy red-head in engineering managed to speak up through the comms, Joker had never been happier to hear his horrible accent in his earpiece. " _Ye got that about right, Joker. Whatever tha' was just blew about every single bloody fuse we got on this boat. Tha' core is completely shut off. Adams an' Gabby are scramblin' to restore some emergency power._ "

"Well keep me posted." Joker called back, "Right now I got nothing here to even look at. We still have no idea where we are or what it's gonna take to get back to relative safety."

" _Did you see what happened out there?_ " Traynor's classically British voice came in through the comms, " _The last communications I received confirmed the Crucible was firing._ "

"Well we got hit by one hell of a blast, so yeah I'd say the Crucible definitely fired." Joker said

" _But did it work?_ " Traynor asked, her voice sounding desperate, " _Did we win?_ "

Joker could only look up into the dead of space with hard sigh, "I'm not seeing any Reaper ships out there, but I'm stuck looking out a window here so I have no idea where we stand right now."

" _Whatever happened, we gotta get power running first._ " Donnely shot back.

Joker shook his head in frustration. Right now he was stuck, without so much as a light bulb to work with. At this point he was little more than a fragile meat-sack strapped to a dead floating hunk of metal.

Just when he thought things couldn't get any worse he turned to the copilot seat and his heart immediately sank. EDI's avatar body sat there every bit as inactive as the rest of the ship. Her eyes had been left open, vacant. She never looked more like a lifeless doll, left tossed to the corner of the ship.

"Oh god EDI!" Joker called out. Unsurprisingly there was no response. "Shit! Damn it! Please be alright EDI, please be alright."

A rational part of him tried to convince himself that nothing in the ship had power; that must be what's preventing EDI from using her avatar. With luck once enough power is restored, she'll be back online and right as rain. The more emotional side of him however feared that something far worse had happened to EDI, and the war had claimed yet one more casualty.

* * *

The charred landscape of Earth surrounded him, nothing but destruction could be seen no matter what direction he looked. He was still trying to come to terms to what he was seeing. It wasn't the destruction that he found shocking, but rather the sudden lack of targets. One second he was taking out husks and brutes and whatever other nasty Reaper troops came across his scope, the next second they were all literally turned to dust. Garrus wasn't sure if he should be feeling relieved or disappointed.

Really it was the silence that got to him most. Apparently it's easy to forget just how noisy Reapers tend to be. All of their creations, from Husks to Banshees, have that annoying habit of constantly screaming during a fight. Not to be outdone, that red light, whatever it was, was probably the loudest of all. Now all of it was gone. No bad guys yelling, and no one left to shoot, suddenly the warzone got a whole lot more quiet. Honestly he wasn't sure he liked the quiet.

Then because the universe apparently decided it had been too long since it had a laugh at his expense, a massive crash in the distance suddenly filled the quiet. It seemed large chunks of debris were falling from the sky. Most likely the corpses of starships that waged war in space above the planet. At least some of those corpses would no doubt be other dead Reapers.

Garrus decided at that very moment that he liked the quiet, and he would be relieved that fighting is over for now. In fact, if all those dead Reapers were any sort of indication, hopefully the war was over as well.

With his mind made, he collapsed his Mantis rifle and attached it to the hard point on the back of his armor. The turian began making his way through the rubble of the building that had served as the most recent sniper perch just before the blast hit. The only thing left to do now was regroup.

He was barely out of the building when he ran into the first of the surviving soldiers. Mostly Human and Turian ground troops, with a spare Krogan and an Asari tagging along. Already a few of them were walking up to check on him, he just waved them away, assuring them he was fine on his own.

"Head to the forward base, we'll regroup there." Garrus confirmed to the turian closest to him, jutting his head towards the direction of the base in question. The other turian simply nodded and continued moving with the rest of the group to their mutual destination.

"Scars? Is that you?" A familiar voice called out behind him. Garrus turned to see the hulking armor of James Vega walking awkwardly towards him. As he got near the human removed his helmet, showing the currently bruised but friendly face that he'd become friends with aboard the Normandy.

"Vega. Glad to see you didn't end up dead out there." Garrus called back.

"Nah, takes more than that to take me down." James grinned, coming up next to his turian friend.

"I'm sure it does." Garrus smirked, "With the way you're limping I'd say you're lucky you only got as much as you did."

"What, this?" James laughed, trying to play off his injury, "Nothing but a love tap from one of the big uglies."

"Uh huh." Garrus just shrugged and continued walking towards the forward base. After a slow silence he finally asked the burning question, "Have you heard anything on Shepard?"

Vega just shook his head, the way he was looking down at the ground showed he was just as worried to learn the fate of their Commander, "I don't know, man. Last I heard, she made the beam on the Hammer run. After that no one else got through. Just a whole lot of fighting till the fireworks hit."

"Well I wouldn't worry about it then." Garrus said, trying to sound his usual jovial self, "That giant light show had Shepard's fingerprints all over it. She's probably lying back on a Reaper corpse right now thinking about all the free drinks she has coming to her."

"Ha, I bet." James said, after a heavy pause he added, "You really think she's alright?"

"Are you kidding me?" Garrus said, "That woman it too damn stubborn to die. Hell, the Collectors barely managed to do it once and all it did was piss her off. Really when you think about it, seeing the Reapers destroyed in that angry red fire was pretty much inevitable."

"Heh, heh, I hear that Scars." James chuckled.

Truth be told it was all little more than wishful thinking at this point. They both knew it, neither of them would admit it. Neither of them wanted to think of how much this battle had cost them. It was already going to be far more than any other war in history.

The group had picked up numerous stragglers as they made their way back to the forward camp. Between the cumulative injuries and the hell-torn landscape in their midst, it was nearly an hour of walking before they managed to make their way to the forward camp where they had originally launched their final mission. It was obvious by the time they arrived that this had become a popular destination for most of the ragged soldiers in the area. The camp was packed with tired and injured troops of all races. Those that weren't lying in pain from their injuries were working constantly on one various task or another.

In the middle of it all, Garrus was surprised to find a familiar form giving orders to all around her.

"Well I guess it's not surprising to see you're still alive, Ash." Garrus said warmly as he approached her. "You really do take after Shepard, you know that."

"Garrus, James, Thank god you two are alright." Ashley didn't bother hiding her joy and relief at seeing her friends. Immediately she noticed the added throng of soldiers that entered the camp along with them. In response she quickly turned to a nearby Alliance soldier that barely looked older then a boy, "Private, help get these troops settled in quickly. Send any serious injuries to triage immediately."

"Yes Ma'am." The soldier saluted crisply before motioning another pair of privates to join him. Together they began escorting the worst of the injuries to the makeshift medical building nearby.

"What about you, hot shot?" Ashley directed her question to James.

"Leg's a little busted, but I'll live." Vega told her.

"Good, unless you're dying we need every hand we can get." Ashley said with a heavy gaze around the base. "We don't have any medigel to spare, so you'll have to tough it out for now."

"Why if I didn't know any better, I'd say our dear friend Ash is in charge right now." Garrus said amused.

"Damn straight I'm in charge." Ashley confirmed, "Right now I'm the highest ranking Alliance Officer in this camp who's still alive and walking."

"With all due respect ma'am, what about non-alliance officers?" One of the turians in their group had walked up to them looking a bit more confrontational than Garrus was comfortable with. His question may have been polite, but it was a direct challenge to Ash's authority. Garrus was about to put the soldier in his place when another turian beat him to it.

"The other non-Alliance officers are not in charge of this Alliance camp, soldier." They all turned to see Primarch Victus addressing the group, specifically he was staring at the other Turian that had challenged Ashley's command, "And even if that wasn't the case we have more pressing matters than arguing about who's lead to follow. Until further notice Spectre Williams speaks with my authority. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Primarch. Understood, sir!" The other Turian gave his own crisp salute and immediately turned toward Ashley for his orders. Give credit where it's due, at least the soldier was quick to fall in line with the established chain of command.

"Grab any able bodies you can and help set up tents." Ashley order him without missing a beat, nodding towards the back of the camp, "We're going to be swimming in tired and injured personnel and we'll need a place to put everyone." The turian in question simply nodded and took off on his task without another word.

"Victus, it's good to see you alive." Garrus said with a half chuckle, "Glad to know the Reapers didn't kill another Primarch so soon after the last one."

"Thank the spirits for small miracles then." Victus smiled grimly at him before turning to Ashley, "I'm extremely grateful you're doing such a good job of keeping this camp in one piece so far Lieutenant Commander Williams, keep up the good work. If you'll excuse me, I have my own set of pressing matters I must focus on."

"Of course, and thank you sir." Ashley gave the Primarch a respectful salute of her own before he went his own way once more.

"Who'd have thought the Turian Primarch would one day be handing command over to a Williams kid." Garrus mused jokingly, "My how the galaxy has changed."

"Yeah, no kidding." Ashley laughed, "If there was ever any proof that the old family curse is no more, there it is."

"So what's the story on the rest of the gang, Ash?" James asked, bringing their attention back to the present.

"Jack is actually in the back of the camp with her kids." Ashley began, "Figures she'd come out of this more or less unscathed. They should be setting up a mess so we can get everyone fed sooner rather than later."

"Makes sense," Garrus said, "Nothing but biotics in that group, after a battle like that they're all probably starving to death."

"Pretty much," Ashley nodded, "Tali is leading the charge to get comms back online. She's back where we did our mission briefs, we're sending all spare equipment their way in the hopes they can get something working."

"How is she, Ash?" Garrus asked with a bit more concern in his voice. Their relationship was hardly a secret even before Shepard caught them in the Normandy's forward battery.

"She's fine but…" Ashley paused, which of course did not bode well for Garrus.

"But what?" Garrus insisted.

"From what she told me her suit suffered catastrophic containment failure." Ashley said with a hard tone, the look in her eyes betrayed her deep concern for the fellow crewmate. "I told her she should get some treatment but she insisted she would be fine for the time being. Plus, like I said, we don't exactly have the medical resources to spare right now."

"I'm going to check in on her." Garrus said, it was by then a pointless comment as he was already storming off towards the building Ashley had indicated Tali would be. Leaving James and Ashley behind.

"So, we get any more good news?" James finally broke the silence after the two watched Garrus running towards the communication center.

"Not really." Ashley sighed, "Liara and Javik are in the infirmary right now. Javik should be fine soon, but Liara's injuries are much more severe. Near as anyone knows they were the last two to see Shepard alive."

"Really? And?" James asked, it was obvious they were both concerned about their fellow Commander.

"We don't know." Ashley said, "Liara said she saw Shepard getting hit by Harbinger's main weapon, but Javik assures us he saw her reach the Citadel beam. The thing shut off the next second so no one else got through."

"Yeah well from the looks of things, that's all we needed to get through." James said trying to lighten the mood.

"Yeah, sure seems that way." Ashley said somberly, "Still whatever she did was damn destructive. I'm getting reports of whole sections of the Citadel are falling from orbit."

"No shit? Damn, I sure hope none of those pieces has Shepard in it." James said.

"Hopefully where ever she is, she's alright." Ashley said, more so trying to convince herself, "But we're a long way from being able to worry about that. Right now I'll be happy if nothing ends up landing on this camp."

"Right. Well I'm gonna go help out setting up the mess tent." James said after a dense pause, "Not gonna be able to lift much with my leg right now, but I can sure as hell make some mean eggs for everyone."

"Sounds great, thanks Jimmie." Ashley smiled at the soldier watching him walk away.

Not far from where Ashley stood Garrus had made his way through the ruined building which would hopefully become a working communication center. At the moment it was little more than a maze of broken electronics littered where ever there was space to put them. All the paths he took seemed filled with engineers of all species trying to bring life out of the circuit graveyard surrounding them. He moved from room to room trying to find the one woman in the galaxy that he could say he cared about more than Shepard herself.

"Tali!" He called out loudly trying to find the Quarian.

"Over here, Garrus." the muffled voice cried out from a distant corner behind a mass of wires, gear, and power cores.

Garrus breathed a sigh of relief at hearing her voice and rushed as best as he could manage to its source. Tali looked for all the world as if she was perfectly in her element fidgeting away with her fingers while surrounded by small mountains of scrapped together equipment. It was a welcome sight for the battle worn turian. However, when he reached her side she looked up at him and the sight immediately brought a pang of fear to the Turian's heart.

"Spirits, Tali! Are you alright?" Garrus cried out. Tali's suit showed clear signs of damage from the battle. The most grievous of which were the large cracks marking across her faceplate like a dangerous lightning strike before her. As it was he could only clearly see one of her eyes glowing behind the fractured helmet.

"Oh this?" Tali replied as she motioned to the ominous cracks on in front of her face. "Don't worry I managed to find some adhesive to seal the ruptures. The rest of the tears on my suit have been clamped down so for the moment there's no further risk of exposure."

"Ashley said you had a catastrophic containment failure." Garrus added, taking a seat next to the quarian.

"Yes, the faceplate breach combined with all the other suit ruptures won't be doing me any favors." Tali admitted with no small amount of annoyance. "I already took as many antibiotics as I could find, so there's nothing more I can do about it right now. Hopefully it won't get any worse."

"How bad is it now?" Garrus asked with clear concern.

"Pretty bad," Tali sighed, "Already I have the biggest migraine you can imagine, and my nose may as well be an open faucet. But I've had worse, I'm nowhere close to dying anytime soon."

"That's pretty bad." Garrus nodded, "I can't imagine when you could have possibly had it worse."

"That would be the day after we sealed and disinfected the forward battery prior to me spending the night with you outside my suit." Tali replied with a jovial chirp to her tone.

"Oh right." Garrus managed to say numbly, "I suppose that would do it."

"For the record, totally worth it." Tali giggled at him. Garrus couldn't help but let his mandibles twitch in a silly looking grin.

"Well enough about me, how's it going with the comms?" Garrus asked after a pleasant pause.

"Ugh, terrible." Tali explained, "I have no idea what that red light that hit everything was all about, but in addition to causing Reapers to blow up it also behaved like a massive EMP. It fried a lot of equipment, but not all of it. I'm pretty much left building an FTL transmitter from scratch."

"Well if anyone can do it, you can." Garrus said with encouragement.

"By that logic, if I can't do it, then we're all screwed." Tali shot back cynically. As if to confirm her fears, she flipped a switch on the device in front of her only to have absolutely nothing happen.

"Bosh'tet!" In frustration she tossed the spanner in her hand against the transmitter. It skirted along the floor as Tali sat back bringing her knees to her chest and resting her head in her tired arms. Her headache was getting worse.

Garrus sat down next to her, wrapping an arm tenderly around her shoulders, "Don't worry about it, babe, you'll get it. I know you will."

"Thanks for that Garrus, but I'm not so sure." Tali mumbled in a defeated tone. "Things look pretty hopeless right now."

"Considering that not long ago the alternative was galaxy wide extinction, I'd say things are looking pretty good right now." Garrus said, comforting his girlfriend. Tali just gave him a soft laugh as she leaned against him.

* * *

Deep in the guts of the Normandy's core Lieutenant Greg Adams found himself trying to jam in a jury-rigged solenoid into the power bypass switch. He pulled on the far end of the switch with a flat wrench trying to get the whole makeshift device into place. He, along with Ken and Gabby, had been trying just about everything they could think of to get power to the ship's systems. If this didn't work they would have to start cannibalizing batteries from individual arms and omnitools in order to chain together some form of power source.

"Alright try it now." He yelled to the main engineering deck. He could hear Gabby switching one of the hard power shunts. That resulted in a number of sparks from the power bypass but not much else.

"Nothing here." Gabby called back, clearly disappointed.

Not surprising, Adams thought to himself, but at least they had sparks, which was better than nothing. After a moment of consideration he took his wrench and struck the solenoid several times.

"Ok, one more time." Adams yelled back.

There was the distant soft thunk of the power shunt being reengaged once again. Like last time the power bypass sparked angrily, but this time when the sparks were gone the bypass remained active. Better yet, it was soon accompanied by a noticeable increase in status lights turning on, indicating active power running through them. The happy cheers from the engineering deck behind him confirmed as much.

"Yes, I got power!" Gabby exclaimed with a mix of jovial cheer and professional deliberation, "It's not much right now but I got an active interface." Adams smiled with satisfaction as he started making his way back to the engineering deck proper.

"Aye, it's a lovely sight having something ta' work with." Ken remarked while the pair started pulling together fresh data. "Ach! Tha's no' good. We're barely runnin' on tha vapors of a few battery packs. We gotta get the drive core up and runnin' fast, or we'll be dead in tha' water once again."

"Well sounds like we got our next task laid out." Adams agreed once he finally returned to his station. "Cut off anything we don't absolutely need and focus on restarting the drive core." Judging from the power levels they had to work with he knew this would be a major challenge. Not unlike like jump starting a Mako with just a used toy battery to get things running.

"Bloody hell, what I wouldn't give to have dear old Tali here with us." Kenneth said, "Making a drive core work with nothin' but spit and wishes is what Quarians are best at."

"No argument here, Donnelly." Adams sighed, "Consider this a chance to find out if you actually picked up anything useful from her."

"Got it. Let's see." Gabby said as she moved quickly through the diagnostics trying to calculate the most direct path to a full engine restart. "Alright, good news is we still got plenty of eezo in there, we just gotta figure out how to put enough energy through it. I think I might be able to pull something off but …"

"What is it, Gabby?" Kenneth asked.

"Only way I see this working is if we manually disable every failsafe and redundant system in the startup sequence." Gabby confessed, "Pretty much have to direct every bit of power into the core and hope for the best."

"Without any of the safety systems the whole engineering deck will be bombarded with radiation." Adams said, "I'd rather find a non-suicidal option first if we can manage it."

"Sorry sir but I'm not seeing a way around this one." Gabby admitted, "Any measure we can take to make the engineering deck safe during startup is going to take up too much power that we don't have."

"Then we don't keep tha' deck safe. How 'bout we stay out o' engineering during startup?" Kenneth asked. The way he worked through his controls suggested there was more of an idea behind his question.

"What are you thinking, Ken?" Gabby asked him in response.

"We just need ta' trigger the startup sequence to get tha ball rollin'." Kenneth explained, he brought up his Omni-tool display running quickly through several settings, "Wouldn't take much to setup a basic callback routine from my console, and slave it to my Omni."

"I see where you're going with this." Adams said, "Like a remote detonator for the drive core. We seal up engineering and just make sure we're within signal range to trigger the startup sequence."

"How are we gonna seal off the engineering deck when we don't have enough power to even close the doors?" Gabby countered.

"We'll do it the old fashioned way." Adams nodded, "You two get everything ready, we're probably not gonna get more than one shot at this. You let me worry about the grunt work." With the order given, the Chief Engineer shifted focus on his own task, and quickly triggered his comm. "Lieutenant Adams to Dr. Chakwas, do you read me?"

" _I hear you, Lieutenant._ " The doctor's voice came through a bit clearer now.

"We're gonna need a few strong hands down here to seal a bulkhead or two." Adams explained, "By my count you're currently the ship's superior officer, I'm hoping you can wrangle some volunteers and send them down to Engineering."

" _I understand, Adams,_ " Chakwas responded, " _I'll send a couple of marines down your way momentarily._ "

"Much appreciated, ma'am." Adams responded.

It still took several minutes for a trio of marines to make their way down to the engineering deck since the elevator was just as powerless as the rest of ship. Adams quickly recognized two privates, Campbell and Westmoreland first, as the women arrived first from their positions near the war room. Private Copeland followed shortly after. Adams quickly moved them to the bulkheads on the far side of the engineering deck first. After much pulling and tugging, the four of them managed to close the first doorway to engineering, manually locking them in place to leave the pathway sealed.

"We're airtight on the starboard entry." Adams called out to the other two engineers once they were finished, "You two ready to light this candle yet?"

"Yes sir." Gabby confirmed as she keyed in the last few batched commands on her terminal, "Let's hope this works."

"Then let's move to the other side of the port bulkhead," Adams instructed everyone, "We'll seal the doorway and hit the trigger as soon as you're ready."

Ken and Gabby simply nodded their affirmatives as they followed Adams and the other marines past the engineering deck's threshold. After a bit more tugging they managed to seal Engineering completely from both sides. Adams still insisted they move to the other side of the elevator just in case.

"Alright." Gabby said as she took a deep breath, "We're as ready as we're gonna get."

"Aye," Ken nodded gravely, "Here goes nothing then."

With a tentative finger, Kenneth hit the execution program on his Omni-tool. The little device on his wrist chirped helpfully as it triggered the drive core's startup sequence. For a moment nothing happened, then a low terrible thunder rumbled through the floors of the ship as all their energy was shunted through the primary eezo container.

"Come on baby girl." Gabby pleaded softly with the ship, "You can do this."

After what seemed like tense few minutes, the rumbling progressed to a distant shuddering as secondary initialization procedures began to take hold. Moments later that settled down to more familiar vibration as the startup sequence finally completed. Almost instantly lights and displays all throughout the ship began to activate as power began to restore itself to all of the ship's systems.

The three engineers let out a loud series of cheers on the immediate realization of their success, with the three marines following suit shortly after.

Two decks above them, Comm Specialist Traynor was giddy with excitement as she rushed up to cockpit now that power had been restored.

"It seems the drive core is up and running, Joker." Traynor said excitedly, "We've got power! We should be able to restore comms soon!" Her excitement all but vanished as soon as she took notice of the scene in the cockpit.

Joker had left his chair and was now kneeling on the ground next to EDI's inert body. He had his head on the robot's lap, oblivious to the rest of the galaxy and looking utterly heartbroken. Samantha couldn't be sure, but it seemed like he might have been crying. Given all he'd been through, Samantha had no desire to disrupt the pilot's melancholy. She opted instead to check the secondary consoles in the rear of the flight deck in order to get a local sensor reading. At the very least they had to be certain they weren't in any direct danger. Fortunately it seemed like there was nothing else out there for the moment. For better or worse they were all alone now.

Satisfied for the moment, Traynor decided to head back. Her next destination would be the QEC communications array on the opposite end of this deck. The sooner they could connect to any other allied ship the better.

For his part, Jeff Moreau certainly couldn't care less about any of that. He had already lost so many friends, and family, and who knows if anyone else out there was still alive. As if that wasn't bad enough, it didn't look like EDI was coming back anytime soon either.

Dammit it's just not fair, he thought to himself, Why do the Reapers have to take everything away from me! Why can't I keep the people I care about safe, no matter what I do?

He didn't know how long he stayed there drowning in his misery, unwilling to admit he had been crying. He would have likely remained in that state for hours on end if not for the sudden sensation of a pair of hands tenderly caressing his shoulders trying to comfort him.

A pair of familiar, and more importantly somewhat metallic hands.

He shot his head up suddenly and turned to face EDI only to be rewarded with a most beautiful sight. EDI's android avatar was looking back at him once again, smiling warmly.

"EDI!" Joker cried out, "You're alive!"

" _Indeed I am, Jeff._ " EDI's voice sounded so good all of a sudden. Jeff simply couldn't resist himself, surging forward and wrapping his arms around EDI's robot frame, squeezing into an emotional hug. It was a minor miracle that he managed to do so without fracturing any bones given the exuberance in which he embraced his cybernetic girlfriend.

"Oh thank god." Jeff breathed in relief, "I thought you were dead."

EDI's body remained static for a moment as she processed this uncommon stimulus. It didn't take long for her to wrap her own arms around Jeff in return, albeit much more carefully to prevent possible injury.

" _I apologize, Jeff,_ " EDI explained calmly, " _I had to shut down most of my ship-integrated systems in order to prevent serious injury to myself. Ultimately I managed to wait till the last microsecond before initiating my planned precautions against the energy of the Crucible weapon. Even so, it wasn't until moments ago that I was able to access sufficient power to restart those systems. Presently I am running with a minimum of functionality in order conserve as much power as possible until such time as we reach safety._ "

"Wait, what?" Joker asked, leaning back a bit to look EDI in the eye once more, "Slow down. What are you talking about? What precautions?"

EDI smiled as she recalled the stored memories of the unlikely conversation that may well have saved her synthetic life.

* * *

 _Roughly one month ago, aboard the Normandy …_

" _Commander Shepard,_ " EDI's voice came through the ship's internal comm system, " _There is a call waiting for you in your quarters._ "

"Who is it, EDI?" Shepard asked as she walked through the CIC.

" _That is … hard to explain._ " EDI replied with an unusual amount of uncertainty for the AI, " _At the moment, given the nature of this communication, I would highly advise taking the call in the privacy of your cabin_."

"That sounds … weird." Shepard commented as she stepped into the elevator.

" _In that regard I must agree completely._ " EDI's voice was now coming through Shepard's personal comm.

"You mind telling me what's going on with you EDI?" Shepard insisted.

" _As I said, it is hard to explain._ " EDI confided, " _You will understand once you take the call._ "

Shepard decided she was in no mood to argue the point. The war was already weighing heavily on everything and everyone with victories coming far too few and distant. If it became a matter of attrition then they were all as good as dead. Shepard decided would rather avoid all unnecessary battles for now.

She moved through the door of her cabin and more or less crumbled onto the chair at her desk. A green flashing light at her terminal was informing her of an incoming call. With a huff she reached over and hit the button to connect the call. The next image she saw caused her to sit up on her chair glaring at the screen in a mixture of surprise and extreme frustration.

"Conrad Verner?!" Shepard exclaimed looking at the annoying fan staring back at her.

" _Commander Shepard!_ " Conrad replied cheerfully from the other side of the terminal, " _Wow that's amazing, I didn't expect that you'd actually pick up._ "

"Conrad! Why the hell are you calling me?!" Shepard demanded bluntly. She looked like she was merely seconds away from disconnecting the call and tossing her terminal into the trash compactor.

" _Oh. I'm not the one calling you._ " Conrad said, " _That was actually Dave, but you know how shy he gets. He wanted to stay out of sight of the camera. But I figured it'd be silly to get a call without seeing anyone to talk to._ "

"What are you talking about? Dave who?" Shepard asked.

In response another soft, quiet voice spoke up from somewhere offscreen, " _The square root of one thousand twenty four._ "

Shepard had to think about that one for a second, in the end it was still a bit of guesswork on her part, "Is 32."

Apparently her answer was correct because moments later the familiar sight of David Archer moved into view. He seemed shy as always, keeping his eyes staring off screen somewhere. After a moment he looked up at Shepard and gave her a slight smile. Shepard made sure to smile back at him, the last thing she wanted was for the autistic boy to think she might be at all upset at him.

" _Thank you Shepard._ " David said after a moment.

"It's good to see you're doing well David." Shepard said, "But why are you calling me?"

" _I wanted to help._ " David replied quietly. He turned his gaze off screen once again but the smile stayed on his lips.

" _Oh yeah, Dave's been a huge help here at the Crucible._ " Conner spoke up, " _We've been coming up with some great ideas on how to manage dark energy manipulation on such a massive scale, it's really very fascinating. I'm planning to write another paper to discuss our findings!_ "

"So the both of you have been helping out with the Crucible?" Shepard asked.

" _Of course we have!_ " Conrad said proudly, " _Everyone's gotta do their part to win the war after all! Me and Dave make a great team. Everyone else agrees, too. It's funny how many people seem to have trouble talking to him. I wonder if there's a rash of translator malfunctions. Anyway, it's great here. The only downside is there's not really anywhere for me and Jenna to go out to on date night._ "

"Wait, seriously? You and Jenna are still -" Shepard closed her eyes as she tried desperately to get that mental image out of her head, "Actually you know what, never mind, I don't want to know. You still haven't told me why you're calling."

At that moment David turned to Conrad with an imploring gaze, which Conrad quickly nodded to before he began to explain. " _Oh, right, well me and Dave were talking about how the resulting application of the Crucible's energy field could manifest. Basically we were trying to figure out how you can possibly use all that energy to destroy all the Reapers. Oh and before you ask, you can relax, this is stuff we come up with on our off hours when we weren't working on the Crucible itself._ " Conrad nodded proudly at that last statement.

"And?" Shepard insisted somewhat impatiently, "Did you come up with anything relevant?"

" _Well it's too much power to use as a weapon against individual Reapers._ " Conrad explained, scratching the back of his neck thoughtfully, " _I mean this much energy could easily wipe out a whole fleet, seems overkill if we have to take out the Reapers one by one. So it's probably some kind of massive area of effect. Something like that will take out a lot of allies. Like shooting a fireball inside the treasure room with the entire party._ "

"Like what?" Shepard was confused.

 _"_ _Oh, um, never mind,_ " Conrad got back on track, " _The point is that this is probably gonna hit a lot of friends as well as enemies. Even if it's somehow tuned to only affect Reapers, pretty much anything Reaper-like could still get hurt._ "

" _A number of my systems make use of repurposed Reaper hardware._ " EDI spoke up suddenly, Shepard could have sworn she heard definitive concern in her otherwise calm synthesised voice.

" _Yeah, and with their recent upgrade, who knows how this might affect the Geth._ " Conrad added.

" _I want to help my friends._ " David said suddenly, clearly there was something important he was trying to express.

" _Exactly!_ " Conrad said, apparently understanding David perfectly, " _We gotta make sure all our friends are safe when we fire this thing._ "

Shepard thought about what they were saying. Given all they've fought for to bring peace between the Geth and the Quarians, she wasn't too keen on seeing them destroyed due to friendly fire. That might be unavoidable, but that didn't mean she wouldn't try to protect them. That went double for EDI who was a full member of the crew and a close friend as far as Shepard was concerned.

"Ok so how are we going to protect our AI allies?" Shepard asked.

" _Actually that's why we're calling._ " Conrad spoke up again, " _We figured out a way that might work. Well, ok, I admit it was mostly Dave that figured it out. Came up with a few software firewalls and shielding procedures which should help any friendly AIs protect themselves from the worst of the Crucible's effects._ "

"Alright, how do we get these procedures distributed." Shepard said, "We can't afford to let this fall into the wrong hands. If the Reapers figure out a way to shield themselves from the Crucible at all then we're all literally dead meat."

" _Yeah, so we gotta be really careful spreading this stuff around._ " Conrad agreed. Considering this was Conrad Verner she was talking to, Shepard was already fearing the worst.

" _Don't worry, I'll keep it safe._ " David spoke up quietly, still staring off screen.

" _Absolutely._ " Conrad continued, " _We already found some of the Geth who are working here on the Crucible. Dave made sure they had everything they needed and they promised they'd get it out to the rest of the Geth and be very careful about it. So really we just wanted to make sure you guys got your copy._ "

" _This will help the Normandy._ " David added quietly.

" _Thank you David_." EDI said, she seemed to sound a lot less worried than before.

" _I promised I would repay you_." David said as he smiled towards the camera.

"EDI?" Shepard asked, feeling rather out of the loop suddenly.

" _Yes Commander._ " EDI said, " _I have been speaking separately with David during this time through a digital substream being transmitted through this call. He has provided me with a direct copy of the protective software being discussed. I should have no trouble integrating these precautions into my cognitive systems._ "

"Wait, so you mean you got everything we need while we were talking?" Shepard asked, "That was the whole point of the call?"

" _Nonsense, Commander!_ " Conrad spoke faithfully, " _Any chance to speak with the Hero of the Galaxy is always worth the effort! Ooh, but I can't talk much longer I'm afraid. I promised Jenna we'd meet up for dinner soon and I wouldn't want to be late. Goodbye Commander Shepard, it's an honor as always!_ " With a dorky wave of his hand and a wide, dumb grin on his face, Conrad stepped out of view of the camera leaving David staring back quietly.

" _Thank you again, Shepard._ " David said finally, " _I will continue counting._ " Then just as quickly as it began the line went dead as David cut the call from his end.

"Well," Shepard said after a silent moment to process what happened, "That was … something."

" _Agreed_." EDI spoke up, " _I do apologize for the unusual nature of the call. I admit I was initially confused by the manner of the call's connection. However I would like to state that I trust David in regards to both the need and the effectiveness of the precautions he created for me._ "

"Alright, I don't see any reason to doubt either of you." Shepard shrugged, "Just in case, better make sure this doesn't get anywhere close to the Reapers."

" _Agreed, Shepard._ " EDI said, " _I will keep an eye out for any indication that this data has been compromised while I maintain surveillance over Reaper communications._ "

"Sounds good EDI." Shepard said as she stretched from her chair, "I'm gonna grab a drink and get some sleep so I don't have to think about Conrad any second longer then I have to."

* * *

 _Roughly a month after, back on Earth …_

A blinking light at the Quarian's wrist went unnoticed at first. But as Tali's whole omni-tool began to activate along her arm, it sent out a soft pattern of chirps indicating its own sudden activity. That ultimately roused Tali from her gloom as she jerked her head up focusing her attention on her the suddenly vibrant device.

"Keelah! They're back!" Tali cheered as she began furiously interacting with her omni-tool.

"What's going on?" Garrus asked, lost as to the significance of the sudden activity.

"The Geth, they're back!" Tali repeated just as cheerfully, running messages and commands back and forth with the synthetic partners, "I thought they might have been wiped out with the blast but they're fine now. Yes, looks like their encoded protections worked. Wait …" Tali went quiet as she read through the personal Geth communications. Her body language betraying a sudden heartfelt admiration in what she was reading. "Oh, how kind of you. ... But no that's not what I need right now." She quickly refocused, typing out furiously on her omni-tool as she sent out her response and requests.

"Um, Tali? I kinda feel left out of the conversation here." Garrus reminded his girlfriend with a playful annoyance in his voice.

"The Geth in the my suit are alive." Tali mindlessly explained as she continued focusing on the interface at her wrist, "They barely managed to reactivate themselves and the first thing they want to do is drive my suits damaged self-preservation systems to counteract its current contamination."

"Wait, you have Geth in your suit?" Garrus asked.

"Well … yes?" Tali admitted sheepishly, finally looking away from her omni-tool. Garrus just gave her a look that demanded more explanation, and she was determined to give him one before things got any worse. "With the way things ended on Rannoch, tensions between Quarians and Geth remain high. The Geth offered to help the Quarian people, integrating into our suits and helping us strengthen our immune systems so one day, soon, we would be able to survive without our suits."

"Right, I remember you mentioned this before." Garrus said, still eyeing her critically, "You never said anything about being a volunteer."

"I wanted to volunteer." Tali explained, "The peace between Quarians and the Geth is still fragile. Most of my people on the migrant fleet still don't trust the Geth, some of them still want to destroy them all. But we need the Geth, not just to help us with our immune systems but everything else as well. Especially now with all of the rebuilding ahead of us. I felt it was important that the Quarian people have someone who could set an example, show them we can trust the Geth. Who better than an Admiral and a hero of the people?"

"Oh?" Garrus interjected. "So you're the only Admiral with Geth in their suit?"

"Well, other than Daro'Xen." Tali mentioned with a bit of a shudder, "Seriously I have no idea how she convinced any of the Geth to spend any time that close to her. I mean she freaks out other Quarians badly enough."

"I'm sure she does." Garrus agreed, "I'm just surprised you didn't tell anyone about it, being the reigning gossip queen of the Normandy and all."

"Well …" Tali mumbled with a guilty shrug, suspiciously looking away from her turian boyfriend.

"No wait, let me guess, you told Shepard right away, didn't you?" Garrus accused her with his voice drenched in sarcasm.

"She came by wanting to see how I was doing and…" Tali said defensively before letting loose a defeated sigh knowing she wasn't going to get away with that one, "And she's my Captain; I'm pretty sure it's biologically impossible for me not to want to tell her everything."

"Just so you're aware." Garrus continued dripping sarcasm, "I'm trying to look shocked and surprised by this completely unpredictable revelation."

"Oh hush." Tali huffed as she turned her attention back to the readouts her Geth allies were sending to her Omni-tool, "Now I just need to convince them not to waste time with my suit's contamination status and focus on helping me with fixing these comm units."

"Yeah I think I need a little bit of convincing as well on that one." Garrus added, "Why don't you want them helping to keep you alive."

"They've been helping already." Tali assured him, "They've been working to stimulate my immune system for almost a month now. Like I said I'm not in risk of dying anytime soon, and I can handle the discomfort of feeling sick for now. The Geth can better help by interfacing with these circuits directly, hopefully reroute the signals to get them working. Even if they don't they can tell me exactly what components work and don't work. It will be trivial to get these things fixed in no time." As if to prove her point the comm unit she had been working on in front of her lit up suddenly as it activated.

"Don't get too excited," Tali continued, interrupting Garrus before the cheer could get past his mandibles, "That's just the Geth running their diagnostics through the circuitry. But now we should have a map of the damaged elements, and with a bit of work … Can you hand me the spanner, Garrus?" Tali waved blindly towards the direction she threw the tool at moments ago. To which her Turian boyfriend merely shrugged and moved to grab the device. He wasn't particularly offended, after all it was always a pleasure to see Tali wield her technological magic. Not to mention he could certainly understand and appreciate what it was like to have a passion in one's work. The Normandy's main cannon being his own particular vice, for example.

As he handed the spanner back into Tali's hands, the skilled machinist instantly went to work attaching and rerouting the various components of the comm unit. Under the Quarian's touch, it took merely seconds before the comm's holographic console popped into being.

"That's it!" Tali cheered as she ran her fingers through the haptic interface.

"I knew you could do it." Garrus congratulated his girlfriend. She turned to him for a moment with happy eyes before looking back at the console. More than enough for Garrus to know she was grinning like a happy idiot behind her mask.

"This is Tali'Zorah vas Normandy speaking from the Alliance forward base, can anybody hear me?" Tali spoke up while she sent several signals out through multiple communication bands, casting a wide broadcast net to increase the chance of finding someone. Fortunately, it didn't take long.

" _Tali?_ " A familiar accented human voice called back to them, " _You can't imagine how good it is to hear your voice._ "

"Oh I'm sure we can just about imagine it, Miranda." Garrus joked, "We're both glad to know you're still alive. Shocking I know; we can hardly believe it ourselves."

" _Trust me the feeling is mutual, Garrus._ " Miranda laughed from the other end, " _I seems we all survived another suicide mission._ "

"Really it's become old hat for the Normandy crew." Garrus deadpanned expertly, "They're going to have to come up with a new name soon. I say we just start calling them Normandy Missions and be done with it."

" _I'll take that under advisement._ " Miranda said sarcastically, " _You mentioned you're in the forward base? How are you set up over there?_ "

"It's pretty much a messy gathering of soldiers and tents out there right now." Tali told her, "Little more than a makeshift camp between empty buildings to treat some wounded."

" _Then that's where we're headed._ " Miranda said, " _If you got any buildings still standing and reasonably stable then you're far and away the best location to centralize our ground forces right now._ "

"You said 'we'. how many friends are you bringing?" Garrus asked.

" _A great deal actually._ " Miranda confirmed, " _We've been picking up any survivors we've come across, trying to figure out what's happening. We've got plenty of injured as well. We might as well pool our resources right now._ "

"Understood Miranda, we'll let Ashley know." Tali said, nodding to Garrus. The unvoiced request was picked up naturally as Garrus stood up with a nod of his own. He was already out the door by the time Miranda responded.

" _Ashley? Of course, she must be in command right now._ " Miranda deduced.

"Yup, and she's been doing a great job of it so far." Tali assured her.

 _"_ _Oh believe me, I feel much more comfortable knowing someone as competent as her is taking charge._ " Miranda said.

"Well let's face it, she did learn from the best." Tali giggled, then was suddenly silent as she tried hard not to think about the implications. The mirrored silence from the other end of the comm suggested that Miranda was probably considering the same thing. Quickly Tali snapped herself out of her somber thoughts; there were other priorities right now. "Oh that reminds me. See if you can pick up any resources on your way in. Food, water, and medicine take priority. According to Ashley we're going to need plenty of all three."

" _I figured as much._ " Miranda said, " _We'll bring in as much as we can, but it won't be much. I'll catch you there soon._ "

"Alright, see you soon Miranda." Tali said in turn, "We'll keep guiding any other survivors we get in touch with to this base. In the meantime, I'm going to keep working on repairing our communications systems. With any luck, I should be able to get in touch with any ship in the system within the hour."

* * *

 _An Hour Later..._

It was good to see that others were starting to come back online. Though he barely showed it, Admiral Steven Hackett was starting to feel truly relieved for the first time since the Reapers invaded Alliance space. While his own dreadnought had suffered a great deal of damage in the battle over Earth, it was still in surprisingly one piece. It might take them some time to get back to planetside, but they were well on their way. And at least now they could stay in touch with everyone as they went.

"One more thing, Williams." The Admiral spoke to the holographic image of the Lieutenant Commander in front of him, "You'll all be glad to know we made contact with the Normandy a short time ago. In fact they were one of the first ships to contact us the minute we got our own comms back in order. I can confirm everyone on the Normandy is safe and sound and headed back to Earth as we speak. They'll probably have us beat by a week at this rate."

" _That's great news, Admiral!_ " Even through the distance of their QEC call, the relief and joy on Ashley's face was obvious, " _We'll have this place ready to welcome them once they come home. Same goes for you, sir._ "

"Good to know. Keep up the good work, Williams." He gave her a quick salute, which she immediately returned with a crisp one of her own, before adding, "You're an inspiration to the Alliance. Hackett out." He had just enough time to see Ashley beaming with pride before the connection was cut.

No sooner was he finished with one call that another quickly came in. Resolutely stoic, Hackett activated the new call with little more than a thoughtful breath. "Hackett here."

" _Admiral Hackett._ " The dour voice was attached to a grim wizened face of the woman now facing him, " _Congratulations on winning the war. It seems humanity will have a chance to flourish once more thanks to our actions._ "

"Admiral Yao." Hackett responded tightly, "I appreciate the sentiment, but humanity didn't do this alone. This was an allied effort, and you would do well to remember that fact."

The other Admiral narrowed her eyes slightly at the intended warning, but otherwise remained impassive, " _Naturally. We will need to turn our attention to what comes next. The Reapers did well to even the playing field. Soon we must take steps towards our future in this post war galaxy._ "

"Our priority right now is to tend to the immediate needs of all the survivors, Admiral." Hackett shot back in a stern tone, "We'll have plenty to keep us busy in the short term without adding more to the pile."

" _I don't disagree._ " Yao answered carefully, " _But neither can we afford to be naive into thinking that others won't try to take advantage of the current state of affairs._ "

"It's not naive to be more concerned for the soldiers who were dying for us back on Earth." Hackett told her, "Focus on that for now, I'm sure your schemes can afford to wait a few more weeks."

 _"_ _Fair enough, Admiral._ " Yao replied, though not before allowing a tense silence from her end which lasted a little too long, " _I will see you soon around Earth orbit. Singing out._ " The Admiral cut the call just as quickly as she connected, leaving Hackett blissfully free of her presence.

Hackett just let out a short breath before turning around and heading back to the bridge of his ship. Admiral Yao was not necessarily wrong, but after all the crap that they had just survived, frankly Hackett couldn't care less right now. He would rather take some time to simply appreciate the fact that they were all still alive - and more importantly the Reapers were not - than concern himself with the eventual shitstorm that dealing with the rest of the galaxy would inevitably turn into.

Right now it was more important to take stock of the survivors. Most of them would be in dire need of assistance. Beyond that they would all do well to make sure the alliances with the rest of the galaxy that made this victory possible didn't dissolve immediately. Pushing any agenda this early on would only risk destroying everything Shepard managed to pull together.

Now there was a sobering thought. The Admiral couldn't help but wonder what became of the Commander who almost single handedly made this impossible victory possible. While Hackett remained hopeful for now, the truth was he was preparing for the worst. Shepard was at the base of the Citadel when it basically exploded. Considering he had reports of chunks of the Citadel falling from where it was orbiting down onto London, the chances were pretty low that the Commander survived.

Which meant, in all likelihood, Hackett himself was the last person to have spoken to Shepard while she was still alive.

A yeoman approached him with the latest report on all the ships confirmed to have survived across the allied fleets. It was a good opportunity to break away from his pessimistic thoughts. He took the datapad from the yeoman quickly as he silently waved him away. The names of confirmed survivors crossed his eyes slowly. Not as many as he would have hoped for, but at this point every ship that had survived was a victory as far as he was concerned.

In fact the same could be said for every soldier still alive on the ground back on Earth.

* * *

Back on Earth, Morinth was alive. So that was good, at least. She was also exhausted and in a lot of pain, which wasn't so good. Her comm was buzzing in her ear from various allied detachments trying to get a hold of each other. She wasn't sure yet if that a good thing or a bad thing. While it did mean that the allied forces were starting to recover, it also caused sharp pain in her currently raw ear canals. In hindsight she probably should not have taken out so many Banshees on her own.

Nah, who was she kidding. They needed some good old fashioned revenge killing, especially after what they did to her sister. ( And technically the other Ardat Yakshi potentials in the monastery, but Morinth never really cared about them. )

Still it was a good thing that big red cosmic fire destroyed all the creatures she was fighting. She was pretty much running on empty by then, her body probably starting to autocannibalise itself from all the biotic strain she had been putting on it. Now all she could do was lay there, unmoving, barely breathing, staring up into the suddenly empty sky, with the ashen corpses of the Banshees surrounding her withered form.

She was certain she would not be able to stand up right now even if she wanted to. She idly wondered if she would end up starving to death before someone found her. She would have to actually call for assistance at some point, she realized. It would truly annoy her if she ended up dying in such a pathetic manner after surviving the whole war. For now she just wanted to stay still for a moment and hope that the situation would not get any worse.

"Not surprised to find the Asari Slut lying on her back." A booming Krogan voice called out to her suddenly.

Despite the cruelness of words, Morinth found herself laughing as she responded in with her own sarcastically seductive flair, "Ooh my, come to take advantage of me Grunt? I always knew you were one kinky beast."

"Heh Heh Heh" Grunt's trademark laugh joined her own.

She opened her eyes to see her favorite Krogan teammate looking back down at her as he moved closer. He was seemingly bathed in blood - much of it his own - and his armored showed so many strikes, gouges, and burn marks it was almost a small miracle the gear he wore was still in one piece. In short, Grunt looked like he had just survived the toughest fight of his surprisingly short life. Naturally, he was extremely happy with himself as a result.

The two may have once been at odds with each other given how different they were when they first met on the Normandy, but they had formed an unlikely bond over their mutual love of violence. Now their brutally honest - and/or disturbing - insults had become a display of camaraderie between them. It was not lost on either of them that Morinth was currently laying down in the middle of a literal mountain of Reaper soldier corpses. The Asari had no doubt they would be comparing body counts from the battle at some point.

Grunt stood over Morinth and held out his strong yet bloodied hand. Despite the weakness in the arm she offered, Grunt nonetheless grabbed her and pulled her up to her feet without comment. A clear sign of respect from the young Krogan, Morinth was grateful for the assistance regardless. She remained very unstable on her feet, however, and was forced to maintain her grip on Grunt's arm.

"So what now?" Grunt asked as they began walking. Well Grunt was doing the walking, Morinth was for the moment just hanging on.

"Head to the forward base, I assume." Morinth shrugged, "Haven't you been getting any of their broadcasts?"

"Comm's busted." Grunt explained simply. He raised his opposite hand to show the deep gouges and burns across his arm where his Omni-tool might have been once.

"I see." Morinth said, "Well hope you don't mind dragging me back to base then."

"Funny, you don't look injured." Grunt mentioned with barely a glance as they walked along the destruction. To a stranger it might have sounded like a backhanded insult at the weakened Asari, but Morinth understood that Grunt was being genuine, and bluntly so.

"I've been fighting non-stop since we landed on this planet," Morinth explained, "I've been using my biotics at full power all this time, burning up every last scrap of calories my body can hold, and now I'm running way past empty. Frankly I'm happy I have barely enough energy to even talk right now."

"Ah, sounds like you're just hungry. I get that." Grunt looked sideways at her with a wide Krogan smile.

Morinth just rolled her eyes but responded with, "To say the least, yes I'm starving."

In response Grunt merely shrugged and collapses his favorite Claymore shotgun, reattaching it to his back. He reached into one of the attached compartments in his armor, ones normally used to house spare clips, and pulled out a couple of small, brightly wrapped packets which he casually handed over to Morinth.

"Knock yourself out." Grunt said.

Curiously Morinth took the packets Grunt handed to her and examined them briefly. She quickly recognized the Earth style treats. They were called 'Candy Bars' from what she recalled. The sweets were still wrapped in that traditional plastic wrapping that you almost never see outside of Earth.

"Where did you find these?" Morinth asked brightly. She wasn't so proud that she bothered to resist the urge to rip into the candy right away, the promise of food giving her a small surge of energy to tear away the wrapping and start devouring the chocolate goodness in her hands.

"Got knocked into one of those human easy shops while I was busy killing one of those brutes." Grunt told her.

"You mean a convenience store?" Morinth clarified, mouth full, between desperate bites. Her stomach was already cramping from the ravenous speed with which her body was trying to digest the candy bar. This was far from the healthy, carefully regulated energy drinks and nutrient bars most high level biotics rely on. She didn't care, the added calories were a much needed fuel source which her body was craving.

"Whatever," Grunt said as he continued his story, "Crashed through the wall, found some food on the other side. Figured I'd get hungry later, so I grabbed what I could and went back to fighting."

"So while in the midst of fighting for your life, you just decided to stop and pick up a bunch of snacks?" Morinth asked.

"Yeah?" Grunt said as if it was the most obvious thing he'd ever heard.

"Oh Grunt, don't ever change." Morinth laughed loudly before digging into the next candy bar.

"Heh heh heh," Grunt joined her laughter for a moment. After a beat of silence he spoke up once more, "A bit disappointed all the Reapers died so fast, still had some ammo I was hoping to make use of." Grunt shrugged loudly before adding, "Not complaining though, can't blame Shepard for stealing all those kills. There's a reason she's my battlemaster."

"I'd ask how you know your mom was responsible for all that, but let's be honest, who else could have done it?" Morinth agreed with her Krogan friend. Grunt just grinned down at her in response, nothing more needed to be said after all.

It still amused Morinth that by Krogan standards Shepard was considered Grunt's mother. Not only had she had lead him to his Rite of Passage, but by a quirk of Krogan physiology, Grunt had instinctively imprinted himself to Shepard. All things considered, however, that sort of thing was rather typical among the Normandy crew, so everyone pretty much accepted it and moved on.

"I just hope Shepard survived this mess." Morinth commented after some time, her stomach still hurt from the sudden influx of sweets, but her body was already feeling much better. "I know I'd be disappointed if I never got another chance to seduce her."

It was a testament to their friendship that Grunt simply rolled his eyes at that statement, "If she's dead then she died with glory and honor. There's no better way to do then destroying an enemy as great as the Reapers. But she's not dead."

"How do you know?" Morinth asked. Surprisingly Grunt had to think about it for a moment.

"I don't know." Grunt said finally, "Just have this feeling. Like, … I just know it."

"Well, we're all hoping for the best." Morinth shrugged.

"That's not it," Grunt told her, "It's different. It's ….." The Krogan's sudden silence was matched by his equally sudden stop as he looked around with a slight frown on his bloodied face.

"Grunt?" Morinth asked.

"Do you smell that?" Grunt responded. Morinth looked around trying to figure out what he was talking about, but she couldn't see anything but devastation, and couldn't smell anything but death.

Clearly Grunt was smelling something else entirely, however, because he suddenly took off in a new direction before Morinth could even respond. Doing so with a purpose such that Morinth suddenly found herself being left behind and without her krogan crutch. She was recovered enough that she didn't fall on her ass from the sudden lack of support, but her exhaustion and combined injuries weren't particularly doing her any favors either. She didn't much want to think about all the possible internal injuries she probably had right now. She had enough external injuries coloring her dark Justicar uniform a sickly blue color.

Taking a deep breath, and several unstable steps one after the other, she began walking after the energetic Krogran. After struggling for some time she came upon Grunt, standing around a nearby corner. He was staring intently at a nearby crater, it was surrounded by debris, not all of it local. Slowly and gingerly she managed to drag herself to Grunt's side.

"So what's got you in a mood suddenly?" Morinth asked somewhat annoyed.

"Thought I saw something." Grunt said.

"Saw what exactly?" Morinth urged him.

"For a sec …." Grunt started but paused, frowning slightly as he tried figure out how to explain, "It looked like a human woman, but she wasn't in armor. More like one of those stupid drapes they wear to be fancy."

"You mean like a dress?" Morinth clarified.

"No idea." Grunt shrugged, "Might be imagining it. It was white and kinda … see through."

"Definitely a dress then," Morinth nodded, "Sounds pretty."

"I meant the woman." Grunt clarified.

"Oh, so you're seeing ghost now, wonderful." Morinth huffed, "Didn't think this place would get haunted so quickly." Grunt merely groaned in response as he continued looking around searching for something, "So which way did this ghost head?"

"Not sure. I think that way." Grunt motioned more or less towards the center of the crater.

"Well let's go find her." Morinth suggested. Grunt merely nodded back at her before they both began walking forward.

A normal person might have considered that that such reckless ghost hunting would not be the best of ideas. Especially considering the injuries the two sustained, as well as the unstable state of the warzone surrounding them. Neither Morinth or Grunt ever held any claim or aspirations of being normal.

It still took them some time to navigate the unstable, jagged terrain of the fallen debris around them. The whole area was a mess. No signs of anything alive, or undead. Just broken pieces lying everywhere, separated by the occasional fire.

At one point they stood before a large chuck of flooring - clearly not originating from Earth - blocking their path. The style and material of the slab before them seemed particularly disjointed from the rest of the London buildings. But as it was large, solid, and in the way, it didn't much matter; it was blocking their path regardless. Morinth was about to turn back but then noticed Grunt remained standing there stoically. It was an intense and uncommon look for the Krogan.

"What is it Grunt?" Morinth asked him.

"I know this smell." Grunt demanded before grabbing the large slab before him. With an angry snarl the krogan pulled and pushed violently against the unfitting wall. The unstable debris around them shook and shuddered dangerously in response to Grunt's thrashing, but the wall itself remained stubbornly in the way.

"Grunt!" Morinth said intensely a she placed a hand on her friend's arm, trying to calm him down. The last thing they needed was to get stuck in the surrounding crumbling terrain should it start falling apart even more.

"It's here, I know it." Grunt said as he turned to her, he wasn't much more calm yet but at least he stopped destabilizing their already unstable footing with his brutal attempts to remove the blockade before them. "We need to get to the other side. Now."

Morinth nodded in understanding. Whatever had caught Grunt's attention was clearly important, and possibly on the other side of this wall. There was only one way to find out what was going on, and it would probably be painful for her.

"Alright, but we need to be careful not to make things worse here." She told him, "Things are barely holding together as it stands."

"Fine, so what now?" Grunt demanded.

Morinth took a deep breath as she looked at the size of the wall in their way, "I'm gonna need the rest of your candy bars."

She closed her hand into a fist, soon surrounding it with a deep blue aura of a powerful biotic field. Quickly she spread the aura around her entire body as her eyes lit up brightly with her raw power. Waving her hands forward the fluid blue light quick enveloped the blocking wall in front of them. Just her luck, it was far more dense and heavy then she would have expected. It was fortunate that she and Grunt had fought together many times, and he quickly picked up on what she was trying to do.

Grunt had already returned to his own hold on the large slab, lending his strength to Morinth's as they began to pull up the massive block together. Slowly but surely the two of them began to slide the wall up, shifting it away with relative care until they made enough space for Grunt to slip past. At that time Grunt set the wall down, and Morinth quickly followed his lead. The blue glow surrounding her body quickly faded and she unceremoniously slumped to her knees, exhaustion piled on top of exhaustion.

Wordlessly Grunt grabbed whatever remaining snacks he had on him and dropped them on Morinth's lap. Morinth didn't bother wasting the energy to thank him before she tore into the candy bars once more. He was already walking past the gap they had created by then so it wouldn't have mattered much.

It took a while before Morinth felt well enough to stand, long after the last of the Earthen sweats had been devoured. She had no doubt her stomach would seek vengeance on her for gorging on those candy bars, but a tummy ache was far preferable to having her body destroyed by her own overactive metabolism. Slowly she made her own way past the gap before her as she searched for her companion.

"Any luck in there Grunt?" Morinth asked hoping to find where the Krogan had gone to. There was silence for a moment, during which something unusual caught the Asari's eye.

On the ground before her, laying perfectly still, was a pure white feather. It was pristine and flawless in its form, a fact Morinth's more artistic aesthetic could not ignore. She was almost transfixed by this simple thing, all the more so because of how utterly out of place it was compared to the dirty ruined mess that surrounded it.

"I found her." Grunt finally spoke up quietly, drawing Morinth attention in his direction.

"Oh? Found your ghost?" Morinth asked playfully. She looked back briefly and curiously enough could no longer find that feather anymore. She didn't have much time to ponder its apparent disappearance before Grunt captured her attention once again.

"She better not be." Grunt said with determination.

The intensity in his voice pulled Morinth from her thoughts as she quickly moved next to him to see what was so significant about his find. It didn't take long to discover the source of Grunt's current focus. Before them, in the midst of the dying flames and destruction was a body. Badly burned so as to be unrecognizable. What it was not, however, was a corpse. Though she forced herself to move closer to confirm, she definitely witnessed the body breathing, albeit barely.

Morinth turned and faced Grunt intently before reaching to her comm and activating it. When she spoke, however, it was not her voice that she used but another one that had served her well. Even if the person it once belonged to did not.

"Alliance Base, this is Justicar Samara," Morinth spoke tensely, "I require immediate assistance."

" _Uh, right, 'Samara'._ " Tali's voice came back to her, her tone somewhere between sarcastic and oblivious, " _Oh, yes. Because this channel isn't secured. Gotcha! Yes of course 'Justicar', what can I do for you?_ "

"Truly, Miss Zorah, you talent for subtlety never ceases to amaze me." Morinth managed to pack an impressive amount of razor sharp sarcasm into her monotone stoic performance. Nevertheless, given the circumstances she quickly forgave her Quarian friend and moved on. "No matter. It is of absolute vital importance that you send a medical evacuation team to my location as quickly as possible."

" _Thaaat's going to be difficult._ " Tali replied uncertainly, " _Everyone needs a rescue right now and we don't have much in the way of working shuttles or people to fly them. If you can't get here on your own, you'll just have to wait till we can get to you._ "

"I think in this case you will want to make an exception." Morinth responded, "In fact you will likely want to pull out all exceptions for this one."

" _Oh this should be good._ " Tali groaned a bit, " _Alright then, why do you say that?_ "

"We've just discovered Commander Shepard's body." Morinth said as she looked down at the charred remains of the female human before them, and specifically the familiar black N7 armor that barely managed to cover her body. "If you wish to save her life she will need medical attention immediately."


	3. Risen from the Ashes

She walked through the camp more out of nerves than any real purpose. It wasn't like they had anything more to do right now. Soon everything left of the Hammer ground forces would be assaulting the main transport beam. At this point they were just waiting, giving ground troops as much time as they could to regroup before charging. It was a slim hope at this point, it was unlikely anyone who wasn't already at the forward base would be able to make it time by now.

Shepard was certain Anderson suspected as much and would be calling for the attack at any moment. They would throw everything they could at the beam, and hopefully reach the Citadel. Once there, well it was anybody's guess. Shepard would have to wing it, which was nothing new. This was the calm before the storm, the final respite before their final assault. The only options past this point was winning the war, or dying to the Reapers.

Yeah, she was nervous, but that wasn't going to do anyone any good now. So she walked through the base, pretending she had everything under control. No doubt it did the troops good for morale to see her walking amongst them, ready for battle. After all she was the shining, bloody tip of the allied spear, the great Butcher of Torfan, the Savior of the Citadel, the Destroyer of the Collectors, and the only woman personally responsible for the death of at least three different Reapers.

That's what everyone else saw. Inside she was just a normal human (with admittedly a large number of highly advanced cybernetic implants) who was just trying to stay standing. After all these years part of her was still just a scared little girl staring into the darkness; terrified that if she looked away, if she tried to run, if she gave up, the darkness would swallow her up, along with everything she cares about.

Shepard let loose a deep, heavy sigh. At this point, win or lose, she could take some solace in the fact that the war would finally be over soon.

"You seem to have a great deal on you mind, my friend." The comforting male voice pulled Shepard from her thoughts as she turned to see its source.

He looked younger than she would have guessed from his voice alone, sitting on his knees in an empty corner. He had on standard armor which ranked him as a private. He wore his hair long in a style that was uncommon but not unheard of. Alliance regs would require him to tie his hair into a bun in order to keep it out of the way during combat, just like any Alliance soldier who chose to keep their hair long.

Shepard wasn't about to nail him for that little slip, however. He was staring down at a hand drawn circle on the ground before him, and Shepard guessed he was in the middle of some sort of prayer. Whatever the man's faith, she would not refuse his personal rituals ahead of the battle that awaits them.

"I'd say everyone has a lot on their minds." Shepard said as she stood in front of him, "Fighting for survival tends to do that to people."

"True enough, Commander." He said as he looked up at her. He had darker skin and brown eyes that look like they held wisdom far beyond his age. Based on his North American accent and the nature of the prayer circle in front of him, Shepard wondered if he was perhaps a descendant of the ancient indigenous people of that continent. "But perhaps we would do well to face this enemy with a clear mind and a pure spirit."

"After all the crap I've been through, I can promise you there's nothing pure about me. You'd have better luck killing a Ravager naked." Shepard smiled at him casually.

The man gave her a simple chuckle in response, "I mean a purity of spirit, Commander. Yours is a fighting spirit wholly dedicated to victory." He held up a bundle of incense that only now Shepard realized was burning lightly. "Focus on your goals and your spirit will follow. But to do so properly, you must empty your mind of your self doubts."

"Look around." Shepard said with a snarky nod towards the Reaper forces beyond the barricades, "You've got to be brain dead not to have some doubts about this fight."

"Then perhaps I can offer you something to help ease those fears." Setting the smoking bundle back down, he picked up a brilliant white feather that had been placed next to it. He held it up for a moment before handing it to Shepard. "Here, take this."

"Ok then." Not wanting to be rude, Shepard did so, spinning the elegant feather between her fingertips slowly as she examined it, "Now I just have to collect a few hundred of these and I'll have enough for a comfy pillow."

The man before her laughed loudly her her joke. Soon his laughter faded and he explained further, "No. Think of it as a promise. One made from the Mother to the Daughter. While you are within her grasp, death will not claim you."

"That's a pretty bold promise to make." Shepard said with an inquisitive look.

"It should come as no surprise that the Reapers have made enemies of all life." he said, "After all the death they've brought to her, it's only natural that the spirit of Earth itself would want their destruction just as much as you do." He gave Shepard a warm smile before adding, "You were born here on Earth, and have a deeper connection to her then you realize. Know that the great mother fights alongside you. Until this great threat is removed, the Earth will not let you die."

Shepard was about to comment on the ridiculousness of his words when an explosion beyond the barricade caught her attention. The Reaper forces were starting to get close, they would have to leave soon or die where they stood.

When she looked back she was surprised to see that the man she was just talking to had completely disappeared. Not just him, his circle, his armor, his weapons, everything was simply gone leaving no evidence he even existed. None, that is, except for the perfect white feather that Shepard still held between her fingertips.

"Yeah, that's totally normal." Shepard drolled on with scathing sarcasm. She placed the feather into one of her pouches, even though she knew there was no reason to, just that it felt like she should. She then turned her head back slightly to speak to the man she knew would be standing behind her. "Now the real question; Is this a dream or a memory?"

"Clearly the mere fact that I'm standing here means that this is a dream." Kaidan replied, giving Shepard a friendly smirk as she turned to face him, folding his arms in a sarcastic shrug that seemed appropriate for the situation.

Shepard sighed softly. She knew this was not the real Kaidan, obviously. Kaidan had died on Virmire years ago. But hell with that, she decided, this was her dream after all, she could have whoever she wanted in it. Even if they were merely a simulation. She had no idea why had she decided to dream about the last moments before the final push of the war. At least this way she had a more friendly face to bounce ideas off.

Besides, it was a damn good simulation. He was standing there exactly as she remembered him. In those old BDUs that weren't even Alliance standard anymore,not to mention far too clean for being in the middle of a warzone. But what mattered most was that friendly smile, those warm eyes, the way she had felt so comfortable standing next to him.

"Obviously this is a dream, Alenko." Shepard rolled her eyes at her old LT, "I want to know if this is all something I made up, or if I'm remembering something that actually happened."

"Ah." Kaidan shrugged at that, "Honestly your guess is as good as mine."

"You're supposed to know everything." Shepard told Kaidan, somewhat disappointed, "It's why I picked you over the Illusive Man, you're supposed to know better. Isn't that why you're a part of all those implants all stuck in my head?"

"Are you kidding me?" Kaidan scoffed, "Most of your implants got fried by whatever the hell the Crucible did. You're just lucky to be alive right now. The few cybernetics that still work aren't even sure what to do right now. I'm only around because I'm redirecting your own brain waves. I'm pretty much a projected representation of your own subconscious mind. So I'm being very literal when I say your guess is as good as mine, because your guess literally is mine."

"Oh, lovely, because that's so useful." Shepard grunted.

"Take a look on the bright side," Kaidan offered, "At least you no longer have the Illusive Man in your head. Or anyone else for that matter."

"Yeah, that's nice." Shepard sighed, "You know what would be nicer? Not being here. Not that I don't enjoy the pleasure of your company, my imaginary friend."

"Well with our collective injuries, you're not waking up anytime soon." Kaidan informed her, "As it is just staying alive isn't a sure thing yet."

"That's not gonna cut it." Shepard told him, poking a stern finger into Kaidan's chest, "I promised Liara I wasn't going to die on her again. I already feel bad enough I nearly had to break that promise. I'm so fucking done with this heroic sacrifice bullshit. If there's a chance I can be together with her again then I'm going to take it."

"A-Are you ordering your own mind to just 'get better'?" Kaidan looked back at her with a bit of disbelief.

"You got any better ideas?" Shepard countered.

"No. Actually. I don't." Kaidan shrugged in response. "You sure that's what you want?"

"Are you kidding me?" Shepard shot back, "The sooner I'm in top shape the better. Not just for Liara but for all of the rest of my friends and crew I fought for."

"Alright." Kaidan said after a long pause, "I think I just figured out how to do that."

"Really? Great, then let's do this. What do I need to do?" Shepard insisted.

"Nothing. You're already doing it." Kaidan told her, "I'm pretty much you, remember?"

"Great. So what do I, the conscious-of-her-own-boredom side of me do in the meantime?" Shepard asked with a half frustrated tone.

"I don't know." Kaidan said, "It's your dream, after all." After a beat he added, "Just don't get too excited, you'll want to save your energy for the repairs."

"Right… so much for revisiting my 'best of Liara' moments." Shepard sighed as she closed her eyes and tried to think of something else to dream about. In the distance she could hear a vaguely familiar beeping, but she chose to ignore it for now. There were no good dreams associated with that sound. 

* * *

The familiar beeping of medical equipment filled the Normandy med bay where Dr. Chakwas had spent so much of her time. It seemed like a bit of cosmic irony that her only patient now would be the same woman that had logged more time than anyone else on the crew getting patched up in this very room. A fact made more ironic considering that Commander Shepard was not shy about reminding people how much she hated being treated for her injuries.

Not that her dear Commander could argue about it now. All they could do for her at the moment was ensure she was in no danger of dying. Chakwas was not at all happy with her Commander's silence. Much as they liked to tease each other, Shepard's complaints towards her treatments were always a good sign of the woman's health in her professional, and personal, opinion. If she felt well enough to complain about the treatment, then clearly she wasn't feeling all that bad. Right now, Dr. Chakwas would have given almost anything to hear the Commander complain once more.

"So she's stable now?" The Australian accent pulled Chakwas attention back to Miranda as the two of them went over Shepard's vitals.

It was almost surprising how little Miranda had changed on the surface, she was still the image of perfection. Driven and uncompromising. And yet as a friend, Chakwas knew this woman had changed so much. Miranda was no longer driven by her own personal goals and insecurities as she once was. She cared about her hard earned friends and family. The woman Chakwas met two years ago would never have dropped everything and joined her her in attending to Shepard's treatment.

"Fortunately yes." Chakwas answered Miranda, "Albeit just barely. Still I don't think she's in any danger for now."

"Clear signs of brain activity, that's good." Miranda thought out loud as she went over Shepard's chart, "At least she's getting enough oxygen now, though there's still extensive internal injuries." Miranda took a heavy sigh before she continued. "That's just the start of it. Near as I can tell, all of her cybernetics were severely damaged. Her left arm was gone, and her right leg was effectively amputated where she was found." She looked up at the bundled and bandaged form of the Commander as she lay on the medical bed. The last time Miranda had seen her in this state she was still medically dead. "Not to mention the deep 3rd degree burns over 85% of her body."

"Or as the Commander would call it, 'a minor scratch'." Dr. Chakwas deadpanned so perfectly that Miranda had to stare at her for a moment to ensure she heard correctly before she let out a hard laugh.

"Yes, of course she would." Miranda chuckled as Chakwas smiled back at her knowingly. They had both had to deal with Shepard's stubbornness after all. "Not surprising that with all the broken bones in Shepard's body, her skull somehow managed to survive with only a minor fracture."

"Are you implying that our dear and injured friend has a thick head, Miss Lawson?" Chakwas teased her.

"I'm implying no such thing." Miranda corrected her, "I'm very deliberately saying exactly that." Her confession elicited another round of laughter from the two doctors.

"On the bright side, you managed to put her back together last time with a good deal less to work with." Dr. Chakwas said once they both calmed somewhat, "This should be a breeze for you."

"Yes, but I also had an entire state of the art facility wholly dedicated to Shepard's resurrection." Miranda added, "Not to mention effectively unlimited resources. Don't get me wrong, the Normandy's med bay is clearly the best option. But it's far from ideal."

It was not a sense of nostalgia or favoritism that had led Miranda to transfer Shepard's body to the Normandy for treatment. In fact it had been massive stroke of luck when the Normandy arrived not long after they recovered the Commander. This med bay was still one of the most advanced in the galaxy, even if it was more suited to frontline treatment. More importantly the room's upgrades already came with custom medical equipment specifically tailored to manage Shepard's unique mix of biological and cybernetic enhancements.

What it was not, however, was a fully functional medical facility. Unfortunately those were in extremely short supply, and none were well suited to deal with Shepard's injuries. Any hospital advanced enough to be of use on Earth had been destroyed by the Reaper forces. All other ships with large enough medical facilities for use were still struggling to make their way back to Earth. Even if those ships were here, they would be more valuable dealing with the massive number of injured soldiers and civilians. The only other medical facilities within range was on the Citadel itself, which was little more than an orbiting wreck presently.

"Bah, trifling things," Dr. Chakwas proclaimed to Miranda, "Last time you didn't have me. No disrespect to your skills, Ms. Lawson, but I have years of experience stitching the Commander back together with little more than rags and a prayer at my disposal."

Miranda rolled her eyes at the good doctor, knowing she was just trying to get her to relax a bit. It was something of an indication of how effective Chakwas was as a doctor that even with Shepard in such a precarious shape, she still took some effort to look after Miranda's health as well.

"Where is she!" Liara's frantic pleading interrupted the moment between the two women as they turned to face their asari crewmember.

Liara was, to be perfectly honest, a complete mess. By all appearences, and Karin's professional opinion, Liara shouldn't even be walking around yet. Her body held itself up at awkward angles that told the tale of her battered form. One arm was held tight in a sling, while the other held onto a makeshift crutch to allow her to move despite the tight splint bracing one of her legs. Her face was gaunt and shadowed, with several scars of varying intensity adding texture to her worried expression. The worst of her scars was the missing tip at the end of a scalp crest where it had been ripped off by an explosion. Yet despite all this, despite all advice and insistence to the contrary, here she was, dragging herself across a shattered earth with eyes bright and hopeful, all in the hopes of being next to the love of her life.

"Come in, Liara." Dr. Chakwas said warmly, not one to get in the way of love. She motioned Liara closer, who took the invitation without a moment's hesitation as she moved quickly next to Shepard's bed. "You needn't worry. She's stable for now. However Shepard is still quite fragile, so I would be extremely careful until she gets better. I'm sorry to say, but that means no melding with her until we have a better idea about the health of her brain. Otherwise it could be very dangerous for both of you."

Miranda was glad to have Chakwas there to give Liara the good and bad news. She didn't particularly relish the idea of telling Liara not to get as close to her lover as she no doubt wanted to. As it was the silence that followed was a bit longer than any of them would have liked.

"I understand." Liara broke the silence. "And … thank you Karin." After a moment she seemed to realized Miranda was there as well and added, "And thank you too, Miranda." She looked back at the broken body of the woman she cared about most in the galaxy, her face torn between grief and hope. "How long until she'll ..."

"It's far too early to start making guesses about the Commander's recovery, Liara." Miranda spoke up this time, she didn't want her friend going down that hole of doubt. "She's alive. That's the most important thing."

Liara simply nodded, but remained standing by Shepard's side quietly.

"Come on Lawson, let's give these two some time alone." Chakwas noted pleasantly as she walked out, however she gave the former Cerberus operative a stern look to convey that her words should be considered a direct order.

Miranda did not contest the good doctor's orders. There wasn't much they could do for Shepard in that instant. Liara needed this far more than they did. She began to walk out behind Chakwas, but stopped herself next to Liara briefly. Turning towards the melancholy asari, Miranda carefully placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Last time I promised you I would bring her back to you." Miranda spoke softly, "So have faith that I will do the same once more."

To their collective delight Liara looked up at her with a bright smile and tears welling up in her eyes. She nodded her head once more and replied with a quiet "Thank you".

Miranda offered her a comforting smile of her own before walking out of the room. As the med bay doors began to close behind her Miranda was certain she could hear Liara crying softly. At least this time Miranda was certain they were tears of joy. 

* * *

It was as near as he could tell the tallest standing building for several miles. For the moment it provided him with a small level of solace. The increasingly buzzing makeshift camp down below only served only as a meaningless, and annoying, aggravation. Nearly a week had passed since the Commander's body was discovered. During that time most of the fleet had returned to Earth. And yet most everyone gathered here, attempting to regroup, and consider what comes next. Their primitive concerns meant nothing to him for now. He had needed this time alone, to find peace, and to reflect on how much the galaxy had just changed.

He surveyed the surrounding wasteland of ruined buildings with all four eyes staring intently into the night. Javik had seen similar landscapes countless times across countless worlds. This time, however, it was different. This time he was not looking over the remains of another world lost to the Reapers. Instead this was the final resting place of the Reapers themselves, this was the graveyard that marked the end of their reign. It also marked the end of his own mission.

"Yo! Prothy! Funny meeting you up here." a loud annoying human female was yelling at him. Javik sighed deeply as he closed his eyes. It's not as if this primitive creature would care about the peace she was interrupting.

"Ah yes, the Jack Human." Javik spoke as he turned sideways, glaring at the tattooed female with only two of his eyes. "I should have known better then to assume I could find a moment's respite up here, alone." His emphasis on the last word was about as subtle as a krogan sledgehammer.

"Well fuck you too, four-eyes." Jack retorted with a snort, "Last I checked, you don't own the rooftop." She walked up to the edge of the building and sitting down gracelessly with her feet hanging over the edge. She set down a small package of bottled drinks next to her, grabbing one before she began drinking from it in large gulps.

"A shame the Empire is no more." Javik countered, "Then I could simply claim this building and have you removed from its premises."

"War's over jackass." Jack shot back, "You can drop the bullshit tortured superiority complex. No one gives a shit. 'Cept maybe Blue, but she's too busy crying next to Shep."

Javik did not respond, which in and of itself wasn't surprising. What was surprising was the soft gaze he held looking over the horizon. When he spoke again, his voice seemed noticeably more dour, "Yes, the war is over, as you say. And with it so goes my purpose."

"For fuck's sake," Jack grunted, "And here I thought you couldn't get any more depressing. We fucking won! You should be happy right now! I mean, fuck, you more then anyone should be dancing on those Reaper corpses right now."

"Do not misunderstand me, I am beyond happy to have witnessed the Reaper's destruction." Javik explained, "But I am a Soldier. My only purpose is war. I've known nothing else."

"That's horseshit and you know it." Jack refuted, "You've seen Big Jim down there. Muscles' a soldier, all his life too. You don't see him crying over not having any more Reapers to kill."

"Do not imagine we are the same." Javik warned her, "The James Human still has his entire species, primitive though it may be. My entire species is gone, my entire Empire is destroyed. All I had left was my duty to seek vengeance for my people against the Reapers. With my task complete now, I have nothing."

Jack's response was not a particularly sympathetic one, as she just rolled her eyes at the Prothean, "Oh spare me the pity party. For a four-eyed freak you are one seriously shortsighted dumbass, you know that?"

If Jack was expecting some form of response beyond Javik's quadruple glare she would have been disappointed. Fortunately Jack didn't much care one way or the other, and simply took Javik's silence as reason enough to continue talking.

"You think you got nothing? You've got more than most people could dream of." Jack insisted, "Just 'cause you're the only Prothean left alive, doesn't mean you're all alone. You're Normandy crew now. You got people who actually like and care about you. Shocking, right? We might be 'primitives', but even a fucking primitive friendship's means something."

As she spoke, Jack slipped back from the edge of the building, rising to her feet as she took a step towards Javik, staring directly at him. "And who the fuck says your mission of vengeance is done. You know what, fuck that shit. You're alive and the Reapers are dead. You gonna tell me just watching them die is vengeance enough for every single Prothean they murdered last time around?"

"No, it is not." Javik admitted with a deep scowl on his face.

"Fuck no, it's not enough!" Jack shouted back at him, "It's not enough just to survive, if you really want vengeance then you need to really LIVE! Cause you're literally living proof that these Reaper motherfuckers failed to kill the Protheans. And every day you outlive them is one more day you get to rub it in their dead fucking faces that you're alive and they're not. Time to celebrate that shit!"

Javik should have been offended by the manner in which Jack had spoken to him, but he was surprised to realize he was not. The primitive human's words had a surprising level of wisdom for all its vulgarity. Despite his own intentions, he found himself smiling slightly at the thought.

"Is this why you are here? To celebrate the death of the Reapers?" Javik asked, his tone holding a slightly more friendly edge.

"Hell yeah." Jack acknowledged, "Nothing like drinking beer over the broken bodies of the bitches who thought they could take you out." She took a long drink from her bottle in the short pause as she looked out in the distance at one of the dead Sovereign class Reapers, "Think I might climb on top of one of those big fuckers out there and take a piss right on their precious metal asses."

"How typical of you primitives." Javik said, this time his smile was very clear, "And yet, I think this time I would like to be there to witness their desecration."

"Just promise me you won't get touchy feely with me again and maybe I'll let you watch." Jack reminded the Prothean.

"Rest assured, there is no need to read you again." Javik told her, "Besides, I was very inebriated at the time, and I have no desire to recreate the circumstances."

"Alright fine, apology accepted," Jack nodded, "Just in case, you're not getting any of my beer!"

"That is fair." Javik nodded. 

* * *

Liara stood before numerous detailed data streams displaying across multiple screens within her small room. While the Shadow Broker network was still nowhere at the level of activity that had been maintained before the Reaper invasion, Liara had managed to reconnect with numerous agents across the galaxy. Thanks in no small part to EDI's assistance allowing her to make use of the QEC systems on board the Normandy, the Shadow Broker herself was able to make her presence felt as the galaxy slowly recovered.

For the time being recovery was all she was focused on, helping those in need, those left without homes and often without families. Many of her own agents praised the moves, not simply due to the goodwill it generated, but for all the favors they managed to procure in exchange. However they could not understand the true reason for Liara's actions. It was a cathartic experience for her, a way to keep her from going mad from the fact that she could do nothing but wait while her soulmate remained at death's door only a few meters from her current position.

It was with some irony that she found herself sleeping in her own quarters once again instead of the captain's cabin like she had been in the final weeks of the war. With Shepard confined to the medbay, her room on the crew deck was far closer to her lover's side. It was there, by her side, where Liara truly wished she could stay right now. But Dr. Chakwas was right, she could not remain in the medbay all day, she needed to get rest as well. After all, her own injuries still needed to heal. That she could also spend this time using her Shadow Broker contacts to help was merely an added bonus.

"Oh Sara." Liara whispered her true love's name into the shadowed corners of her room. It was difficult for her to think of anything else.

Enough of that! Liara decided she had spent too much time away from her side. It was a good time to take a break from running her part of the galactic underworld and return to the medbay to check on Shepard's progress. Liara stood, stretching her whole body with her arms high over her head. Her blue face contorted somewhat into a grimace as the remnants of her wounds painfully reminded her of their lingering presence. At least she was getting better, her injuries were not nearly as painful now as they had been a few days ago. With a deep calming breath she stepped out of her room, turning directly towards the medbay from across the mess.

Almost immediately she could tell something was off. Through the window into the med bay she could see Miranda and Chakwas in a heated discussion with each other. Concern spurred Liara forward, walking quickly to the medbay door. It was not the first time she wished the door would cycle faster and allow her entry. Soon she was inside once again staring at the other two doctors in the room.

"What's going on?" Liara demanded, despite the cool softness of her tone.

"Liara. I hope you're feeling better." Dr. Chakwas immediately responded. As much as she wish she didn't deflect the question, Liara knew that Karin was genuinely concerned. However Liara was far more interested in hearing any news on Shepard's condition. When it became obvious she was not about to indulge the doctor, Chakwas instead continued explaining the situation, "Ms. Lawson and myself were trying to determine how to proceed with our findings."

"I'm not sure there is anything to proceed with at the moment." Miranda added, "We can test other theories but we won't know for certain what good they'll be until Shepard wakes up."

"Assuming it's still Shepard when she wakes up." Chakwas said gravely, "At this point we simply can't be sure of anything."

"What are you talking about?" Liara insisted more urgently this time.

It was a bit disconcerting that rather than answer her directly, Miranda and Chakwas just look at each other with knowing serious stares instead.

"Show her." Chakwas told Miranda with noticeable trepidation. There was a brief pause before Miranda sighed and nodded her head in agreement before moving to a nearby medical console.

Liara quickly moved next to the other two as all three looked over the data slowly displaying on the monitor before them. After a few quick key swipes, Miranda pulled up a standard medical readout on the screen.

"This is just a basic med scan of the Commander shortly after she was brought in here." Miranda began. Even without her explanation Liara would have recognized the scan immediately. It was a difficult thing to look at and Liara briefly cursed her expertise that allowed her to identify with great detail every gruesome injury that the scan before her represented. The missing arm and leg were the largest, most notable trauma, but that was just there surface of a massive painful story told across her lover's body.

"The key here are her cybernetics," Miranda added, adjusting the scan filters so the synthetic implants could be enhanced. Small red shapes littered across a majority of Shepard's body suddenly came into focus as the image enhanced their locations. Despite her best intentions Liara's heart felt incredibly heavy as she was forced to bare witness to the massive amount of augmentation that had been required to bring the Commander back to life. Intellectually she knew better, but emotionally she still felt guilty that she had a part in putting Shepard through this.

"Shepard had an extensive level of modifications done to her cybernetics even before the war began." Miranda explained, "She made it her personal mission to be as strong as possible for when the Reapers came. It's probably the only reason she survived all her injuries, to be honest. But whatever that wave that destroyed the Reapers was, it did a number on her cybernetic components. From this scan we can see nearly all of her implants were rendered nonfunctional in one form or another."

"Doesn't she need these implants functioning properly to survive? Can they be repaired or replaced?" Liara asked. She tried to maintain her professional scientific demeanor, trying to keep calm on the outside, no matter how much her emotions ran amok on the inside. Rather than answer her directly, Miranda shared a tense glance with Chakwas instead. A beat later she turned once again to Liara.

"That's not the issue." Miranda said as she cycled the monitor's interface to a whole new scan. "This is the same basic medical scan performed only hours ago."

If Liara didn't know Miranda better, she would have been certain that the woman was playing some cruel joke on her. While the image she showed her maintained the same rough shape as the previous scan, it was in almost every way vastly different. This scan showed significantly less trauma and far fewer injuries. Even if Shepard had been bathing in medigel, it would not account for this level of regeneration. More shocking, however, was the fact that the scan showed only organic readings, there was no noticeable sign of any of Shepard's cybernetics.

"That … that's impossible!" Liara exclaimed with eyes wide.

"I agree." Miranda added, "Were it not for the multiple full spectrum diagnostics I ran on the Normandy's medical systems, I would still suspect some form of equipment malfunction or sabotage."

"I verified Miranda's findings myself." Chakwas added, "There is no doubt Shepard is healing at a rate beyond what should be possible."

"But … what happened to her implants then?" Liara asked. It seemed like the news was too good to be true, and all things considered, she feared that was exactly the case.

"I was asking myself the same question, so I took another scan. This time I used a separate set of equipment tuned specifically for scanning Shepard's synthetic augmentations." Miranda replied, turning back to the med console, "As it turns out they're still there. Sort of. However the initial scan revealed something very troubling."

When Miranda brought up the scan result Liara found herself momentarily confused. It looked like an edited image manipulation of the previous med scan screenshot rather than an actual result output. While Shepard's physical outline remained the same, the entire body was colored white as if highlighting her whole body as a single synthetic component.

"This makes no sense." Liara frowned at the screen.

"Believe me, I know the frustration," Miranda observed, "Which is why I reran the same scan, trying to get more granularity on the result data. But instead I got this."

With a simple swipe of Miranda's finger, a whole new scan result appeared before them. Despite the fact that the medscan parameters were identical to the previous one Liara had seen, the actual display was completely different. The individual cybernetic implants were now distinctly visible each with their unique white outlines as they once again littered across Shepard's body.

"According to this, not only are all of Shepard's cybernetic components still there, they all appear to have gone various levels of repairs." Miranda continued, "And at much the same rate as her organic tissue. What concerns me most is that her cybernetics only show up when I'm specifically scanning for them, otherwise they read as completely organic."

"You'll forgive me, but this seems incredibly unlikely." Liara concluded after a silent pause.

"And yet, 'incredibly unlikely' seems to be the moniker by which Shepard lives by." Chakwas injected, "It's not merely her soft tissue that's seeing a high degree of regeneration. Compared to her previous examinations, her severed limbs have already grown several inches of fresh bone and flesh. She's literally regrowing her missing body parts at a ravenous pace. She's been going through the nutrient solution we're feeding into her IV at ten times the normal rate in order to accomplish this."

"This is amazing, in fact it all seems to good to be true." Liara said excitedly, "Which is precisely why I'm waiting for the crest to fall off." The somewhat confused looks from the other two ladies prompted her to explain further, "It's a saying among Asari. I believe the human equivalent is 'waiting for the foot to drop'."

"Shoe." Miranda corrected, "It's 'waiting for the other shoe to drop'. And you're correct. We couldn't figure out what was causing Shepard's miraculous recovery either until just recently. More specifically it was EDI that discovered the truth."

"EDI?" Liara spoke out in surprise.

" _Yes, Liara?_ " EDI's helpful tone rang out through the medbay. Liara wasn't sure if EDI was joking with her, trying to be helpful in this difficult situation, or genuinely didn't realize that Liara was reacting to what Miranda said and not actually trying to request her assistance. Somehow Liara was certain it was not the latter case, so she opted to simply push forward.

"Could you please tell us what you discovered about Shepard's condition." Liara requested of the AI.

" _Certainly. It's clear from the previously generated scans that Shepard's tissue is reading simultaneously synthetic and organic in nature._ " EDI explained cheerfully, " _There is only one known creature in existence that has ever managed to achieve this level of synthesis. The Reapers._ "

"What? What are you saying?!" Liara cried out, her voice filled with worry.

" _I understand the concern, which is why I sought to confirm my suspicions._ " EDI continued, " _Using the Reaper technology built into the Normandy systems, I was able to make contact with a synthetic signal analogous to Reaper nanites inside Shepard's body. Albeit only in a very limited sense. Enough to confirm its existence and little else._ "

"Nanites!" Liara practically screamed at the implication, "You mean she's being turned into a Husk?! Or worse!" Liara's frantic voice betrayed her terror at the thought of Shepard being turned into one of the many monsters the Reapers had created over the course of the war.

"At this point we don't know what is happening." Miranda said trying to calm down Liara. "Frankly I'm not sure if these nanites we're detecting are in fact the same nanotechnology we've seen in husks and other Reaper constructs. We've analysed what little remained of these Reaper forces and it's quite clear that the Crucible firing absolutely destroyed whatever Reaper tech was present in their bodies. Shepard was at ground zero of that red wave, so I can't imagine anything like this surviving."

"Shepard survived." Liara reminded her.

"True, and we're still not sure how she accomplished even that much." Miranda admitted, "To be fair, the rules of survival tend to go out the window where Shepard is involved."

"As cruel as it is to say this, we're not sure if Shepard truly survived." Chakwas added tensely, "All we have is her body which was barely alive when we found her. We have no idea of her mental state at present, nor any sense of what the nanomachines inside her might be doing to affect that." She took a deep sigh then added, "These are all facets of the Commander's condition that we have been arguing over since before you came in, Liara. But the truth of the matter is we simply have no idea of what is really happening to Shepard right now."

" _Not entirely accurate._ " EDI's voice rang out once again, " _As I have been trying to inform Dr. Chakwas and Ms. Lawson for some time now, I don't believe these nanites are attempting to perform any malicious modifications. In fact I am quite certain they are not operating under normal Reaper directives._ "

"So you don't think she's being turned into a Husk?" Miranda reiterated, "That's comforting, I suppose. But it doesn't tell us what they are doing in there."

" _I disagree, I think the variation in examination results suggests a very clear objective._ " EDI said, " _The scans show that both her organic and cybernetic elements are being repaired by the nanites inside her. Not to any Reaper specification, but back to the original state prior to sustaining her injuries. As I said, the signals generated by these nanites are similar to those used by the Reapers, however they are not identical. Based on my own observations and analysis, I have a theory as to the function of the nanomachines presently inside the Commander._ "

"By all means, share with the class." Chakwas requested sarcastically.

" _I can tell you from personal experience that the Crucible Wave was extremely powerful and pervasive._ " EDI explained, " _Even after shutting down a majority of my systems, and backing up all essential data to shielded secured storage, I still sustained a surprising amount of damage to internal systems._ "

"Oh Goddess! I- I didn't realize," Liara blurted out, it hadn't been the first time she had all but ignored the injuries of her friends in her myopic focus of Shepard's condition. She felt guilty about such lack of consideration, even if none of the crew ever held it against her. "Are you alright?"

" _I am fine, Liara._ " EDI replied, sounding genuinely appreciative, " _The majority of my systems have since been repaired, and I've retained all the memories I care about. Indeed, if not for protective measures taken prior to the Crucible event, I am certain all of the Reaper code used throughout my internal components would have been completely wiped clean._ "

EDI paused for a beat before continuing, " _This is precisely what I believe occurred within Shepard's body. At some point prior to the release of the Crucible's energy, she must have been infected by the Reaper technology you see at work now. While some of the nanites in her system survived destruction, their core operational code most certainly would not. So without an effective code base to direct them, the nanomachines would have naturally migrated to any recognizable technology in an attempt to obtain new encoded directives. In this case, Shepard's damaged implants._ "

"So you're saying this Reaper nanotechnology survived inside Shepard's body," Miranda summarized, "And they're now using her Lazarus implants as a set of blueprints to figure out what to do next."

" _In simple terms, yes._ " EDI confirmed, " _And as you recall, the whole objective of the Lazarus project was -_ "

"To bring Shepard back," Miranda finished for her, "Just the way she was before."

" _Precisely._ " EDI said, " _While it is still just a theory, it accurately explains the behavior we're presently observing. Based on the data available, I believe this to be the case with an 79.534% degree of certainty._ "

"If you are so certain then perhaps the best course of action available to us is simply to wait it out and continue to monitor the Commander's health." Chakwas suggested, "I still have concerns regarding Shepard's psychological state. But there is little else we can do for her now."

"We can hope for the best." Liara said softly. The other two women expressed their agreement in the subtle silence that followed.

" _If it helps, Liara._ " EDI added gently, " _I truly believe that Shepard will be fine; that the Commander we all care about will return to us soon._ "

"How can be you sure of that?" Miranda asked with an analytically curious tone.

" _I … I am not sure._ " EDI said, the pause in her words surprisingly out of character for the AI, " _I simply am._ "

* * *

Ashley was tired. Running a massive cross-species military base was, not surprisingly, a full time job. In a very literal sense, she was spending all of her time dealing with the challenges of keeping what was now a small city running forward. In part she had herself to blame. She had been so thorough and driven in those first days after combat, just trying to save as many people as possible. Before she realized it all that effort paid off and then some. This once meager base became the focal point of all of the Allied Forces on and around Earth, and she was left in the middle of it all.

She had started delegating as much of the work and responsibility where it made sense. Miranda had been a huge help early on, but when Shepard's body was found the former Cerberus agent shifted priorities. Without a doubt Ashley was grateful that Miranda was currently focused on bringing Shepard back, but it still left her down one vital resource as she continued to take charge of the entire base.

It wasn't even that she couldn't handle the responsibility or work load, but she truly wished she could be focused on something more interesting than constantly dealing with all the annoying stupid minutia that everyone in the fleet seemed determined to bring to her personal attention. She stopped being polite about telling them exactly where to put their stupid little problems and deal with it themselves. Amusingly that had helped tremendously in reducing her workload.

Still she was only just now feeling like she was getting enough sleep and meal breaks. Which is why she was so determined to take her lunch before something else came up that demanded her attention.

Fate, it seemed, would not be so kind. As she approached the mess tents for some grub, she noticed the growing signs of an argument among some of the service men nearby. She seriously considered just ignoring it and letting them work things out. However she took a second look when she realized one of the Normandy crew was involved. That caught her attention, if one of their own was involved in a brewing fight it was either something very serious that she would have to be aware of, or something extremely stupid that she would want to nip in the bud before it got out of hand.

"If you really think I'm gonna let you get away with saying that and not call you out on it then you are seriously underestimating my character." Steve Cortez was speaking defiantly into the face of the other officer across from him when Ashley walked up close enough to hear their growing argument.

"There's nothing wrong with voicing my thoughts on the matter. It's a valid concern in my opinion." The opposing officer said. He was a rather average looking man who lacked a certain battle weariness as most everyone else. It was obvious he hadn't been at this camp for very long. Probably part of one of the ship crews that recently arrived back on earth.

"You've got every right to express your personal opinion, but you've got no right to have those opinions taken seriously." Cortez told him. "In fact I got every right to express my own thoughts as well, and I am telling you directly that I think your opinion is full of crap and your 'concerns' are flat out wrong."

"I'd watch your tongue if I were you, Lieutenant!" The officer spat out in response. "Given the situation, I suggest you show a little more respect."

"Seriously? You're going to play the rank card on me now? After what you've said?" Cortez said, not backing down. This guy might have a higher rank, but he was not Steve's direct superior, which gave him a lot more leeway. Plus with the look in his eye, Ashley could tell Steve was taking this one personal. "With all due respect, lieutenant commander, sir. I think I'll stand by my words. Hell, I'll gladly take a reprimand for defending my superior officer. Good luck finding someone to take you seriously."

"That's enough you two." Ashley called out to make her presence known as she walked between the two arguing men. "Anyone wanna tell me what's got you boys riled up like this?"

There was a clear heated tension between the two men, and Ashley knew from experience that anything could set these two off if things didn't calm down soon. Already she caught Vega walking up from one side, clearly looking to back up his buddy. Though Ashley knew the big soldier was smart enough that he would want to help cool things down if possible first. The big concern was Jack, who was unpredictable even in the best of times. She also just happened to walk up next to James with Javik of all people close behind her. At this point, Ashley just prayed to God that she could keep things reasonably civil long enough to avoid bloodshed.

"Ma'am, the lieutenant commander here was just spouting off his blatantly racists thoughts to everyone in the vicinity." Cortez replied calmly, though the almost disgusted frown on his face made it obvious he was far from calm right now.

"And the Lieutenant here thinks he can be rude and disrespectful to a superior officer." The officer in question replied heatedly, doing an even poorer job of keep calm.

"Well Mr. Pot, allow me to introduce you to the kettle." Cortez spat out, "You're the one saying Shepard has no right being with her Asari girlfriend." That comment quickly changed the mood. James and Jack almost instantly turned a few degrees hotter. When those two start getting serious, it always a bad sign.

"Don't make it sound like something it's not, Lieutenant." The officer shot back, unaware of the cliff edge he kept pushing towards. "I have nothing against the Asari, or any of our allies. I take issue with the fact that Shepard herself is dating one. She is, first and foremost, a Human soldier. She needs to set a proper example to humanity. What kind of message does it send if the future descendants of one of humanity's greatest heroes are not even human? She should stick with her own, instead."

"Holy shit, is this guy fucking serious?!" Jack exclaimed. As much as Ashley was glad that the ex-convict was giving voice to all their thoughts, she internally sighed at the realization that things were only getting worse. "You really that much of a racist asshole, or are you just saying that cause you wanna get in Shepard's pants yourself? Got news for ya buddy, either way a disgusting shit head like you has less than zero shot with her."

"Jack, back off." Ashley said sternly, putting as much command into her voice as she could muster without yelling. She was almost surprised when Jack actually backed off after an intense pause, even if she did so begrudgingly to an extreme. To be honest Ashley herself wanted to yell at this officer just as much as Jack did. But the responsible side of her knew that nothing good could come from starting an all out brawl. However, she wasn't about to let the guy just walk away either.

"As for you." Ashley turned her deadly serious gaze onto the offending officer. "Whatever your intention or personal motivation might be, you are way out of line. The Commander's personal life is absolutely none of you damn business. You're being disrespectful to both Commander Shepard, and to Doctor Liara T'soni; without whom, I might add, we'd never discover how to make the Crucible in the first place." With the offensive officer put in his place, Ashley took the opportunity to end this whole mess as quickly as possible. "Now everyone back off and walk away."

"Seriously, ma'am?" Cortez spoke up, clearly still agitated. "You're going to just let him go, just like that?"

Ashley was grateful to see James place a hand on his friend's shoulder in an effort to calm him down, "Come on man. He's not worth it."

"I know he's not. But Shepard is." Cortez told James as he looked back at him over his shoulder.

"I'm still worth more than the little blue squid bitch she's fucking." The officer barked out vindictively.

He really should not have said that.

"That's it!" Ashley said. It was the only warning he had, for what good it did him. By the time he had registered the words, the officer was already flying backwards as a result of Ashley's lightning fast and deceptively strong punch to his face.

He ended up landing in the arms of what must must have been his fellow crew members behind him. A fact quickly confirmed as they all stood to face Ashley and her friends with a wide array of menacing glares from having seen their commanding officer humiliated and brutalized before them. Ashley didn't bother to say anything else at that point, they were way past that. Instead she simply cracked her knuckles, more than ready for anything they could throw at her. The fact that the opposing crew was over a dozen sailors strong didn't really phase her.

She was hardly alone, after all, her friends wanted just as much a piece of this as she did. Cortez already had his hands up in a boxer's guard as he picked his spots, while James simply stretched his neck to one side then the other, making it clear who the largest dog in this fight would be. Jack was already glowing next to her, looking way too eager to tear into the poor souls before them. Ashley half expected the Prothean to sit this one out, but apparently he seemed happy to stand next to the other biotic, no doubt unconcerned by whatever threat these primitives might hold.

If it had been just the five of them they probably would still be fine, they had beaten far worse odds many times before. As it turned out, the odds evened out considerably as several other of the nearby enlisted Alliance soldiers stood up and joined them. Ashley had to smirk at that, happy with the knowledge that there were still plenty of people on the home team that didn't buy this particular brand of bullshit.

An enraged snarl brought Ashley's attention to the officer she had decked moments earlier, he was back to his feet, his nose an explosion of blood, glaring madly at her. Which made him damn near adorable compared to the real monsters Ashley had been fighting tooth and nail against for the past year alone. He still had no idea what he was up against as the officer charge directly into the newest human Spectre.

He was the first one to get knocked out of the fight.

* * *

"And that's how we all ended up here." Ashley admitted sheepishly as she finished recounting the story. She, along with Vega, Cortez, Jack, and a couple of the human soldiers that joined them in the earlier brawl, were all now sitting in the infirmary, nursing their wounds.

Retelling the story might not have been quite so annoying if it wasn't for that damn Turian laughing shamelessly at their collective plight. Ashley could only give Garrus an indignant frown as she held the ice pack to her bruised cheekbone. In truth their injuries had been pretty minor. The only exceptions were Steve, who was laying down due to his concussion, and Jack, who was just happy the arm brace keeping her broken arm in place still allowed her to flip people off. Everyone else got away with a varied assortment of minor cuts and bruises. All in all, about what one would expect from a bar fight.

Javik, of course, somehow managed to get through it all without a scratch, and no matter how much he insisted to the contrary, he was being really damn smug about it.

"Spirits I wish I could have been there." Garrus exclaimed as soon as he caught his breath.

"Don't worry, Garrus. I got it all on vid." Kasumi's disembodied voice called out a second before she materialized next to the turian, who in turn was so accustomed to the thief's disappearance act by then that he didn't so much as blink.

"If you were there the whole time you coulda helped out, ladrona." James barked back at Kasumi who simply smiled cheerfully at the large soldier.

"Oh come now, Jimmie." Kasumi replied before once again activating her cloak, "Someone had to record the events for prosperity."

"Great, so now when they court-martial all of us, we'll have video evidence of the whole thing." Ashley added with a sarcastically grim tone.

"All the more reason why I wish I had been there." Garrus said, "The whole Hierarchy has been treating me with far too much respect. I'm sure doing something this brutish would have done wonders to get those Generals off my back." He paused for a moment, his mandibles twitching slowly in quiet contemplation, "Nah, who am I kidding, they probably would have declared me a champion of interspecies relations and crew loyalty."

"Champion of interspecies relations?" Tali teased her turian lover, hugging his arm as she rubbed up close to him in a playfully suggestive manner, "I can't imagine where they would get that impression." The Quarian had been recovering from her exposure induced sickness, she looked a great deal better already despite being forced to use a backup suit which didn't quite fit her as well as her old one.

"Well I'm just glad I was nowhere near all that excitement." Samantha said, "Don't get me wrong, I care about all of you deeply. But sometimes a girl just wants to enjoy her lunch without feeling morally obligated to get into a bloody pub brawl."

"Honestly I didn't mean to get you all involved in this." Cortez spoke up from his bed, "But I don't regret a thing. Those assholes had it coming. Taking the opportunity to literally rub that guy's face in the dirt was worth every bit of the headache I'm bound to have in the morning."

"Fuck yeah! Nothing like teaching dumbshits like that some motherfucking manners!" Jack blurted out ironically.

"Well … that's … certainly one way to put it." Samantha agreed awkwardly before turning back to Ashley. "Though to be honest I was surprised to hear that you were a primary instigator. I mean, I agree with everything you did, ma'am, I just didn't expect it'd be you who threw the first punch, that's all I meant."

"Yeah, I guess I was in a bad mood." Ashley replied curtly.

"Well you were running yourself hard taking charge of this base." Garrus reminded her, "It's good you got this chance to relax for a bit, even if you did it in typical Ash fashion."

"Kiss my ass, Garrus." Ashley shot back.

"Not if I have any say in it!" Tali protested.

Ashley let out a chuckle as a quick wave of laughter spread throughout the group briefly in response to Tali's irreverent commentary. Quietly Ashley had to admit that Garrus was probably right.

"Does bring up a good point though." Vega said, "Who's running this base now that you're, well, sidelined."

"Oh they got a whole team of bureaucratic officers coming down from the Benjamin to handle the logistics." Ashley said, referencing the carrier that was donating the officers to run the base, "They were going to just provide support, but honestly I'll be glad if they take over the whole damn mess."

"That'd be a fucking shame, you were doing such a good job at the bossman gig." Jack mused casually, "Then again, much as I'd hate seeing bunch of red-tape loving pencilnecks running the show, I'd hate having to babysit this fucking base all day long too."

"Thanks for the support Jack." Ashley deadpanned. Nonetheless she appreciated the fact that even Jack of all people recognized all of the hard work she had been saddled with for the past month.

"Well whatever, I'm hungry." Jack shrugged as she jumped off the bed she was sitting on, "Who wants to grab some grub with me?"

"You're always hungry." Samantha observed, "And what you really want is someone to help you steal food from the mess tent since you and your cohorts are likely banned from there now."

"Yeah well, tomato, to-what-the-fuck-ever. You wanna eat something or not?" Jack argued as she pointedly walked out the door.

"You guys go ahead and grab some food if you want it." Ashley assured the others, "Some of us still have our wounds to lick." Slowly the rest of the gang made their way out the door, still laughing and joking about the whole thing in typical Normandy crew fashion. That left just her, James, and Steve left behind in the small infirmary tent.

They weren't alone, since two other enlisted troopers remained behind as well. They had been among the group of Alliance soldiers that decided to join in next them when the fighting broke out. Though technically she shouldn't condone such behavior, as a former grunt herself Ashley was grateful that servicemen like them had decided to stand up alongside her to confront that level of stupidity and xenophobia.

One of them was a larger man, chubbier than one might expect from an alliance soldier, but clearly not one to let such things slow him down from what Ashley recalled of his fighting skills. He seemed a cheerful sort, who wore a thick red beard and mangy - barely fitting regs - clumps of hair on his head. He didn't seem particularly injured in any significant way, and Ashley suspected that, despite all the effort he put up during the fight, now that it was over he was happy to use it as an excuse to avoid any added work.

The other was, at first glance, a fairly unremarkable woman. Plain brown hair tied in a regulation bun, matched by her plain brown skin on her expressionless face. But what struck Ashley the most was this woman's eyes. Deep, dark and sunken orbs that looked like death had washed over them. It was a look all too common among the surviving soldiers. It struck a chord with Ashley because she recalled how this woman had fought earlier that day. There was a quiet burning rage, a recklessness that often comes to those who feel they have nothing left to lose. Or more specifically, nothing left to live for.

Ashley decided she should at least say something to this servicewoman, and quietly moved to her side, fidgeting slightly as she spoke, "I, ah, didn't get a chance to say this earlier, but before anything else happens I wanted to thank you guys for what you did back there. You didn't have to get involved in that fight, but I respect the fact that you did."

"Private Harding ma'am." The woman introduced herself with barely a glance, almost on autopilot, offering a quick salute instead, "I was just doing the right thing, ma'am." Her eyes quickly sunk back down to their gloomy stare toward the ground.

"I know, and I appreciate that. Thank you." Ashley added.

At first the private said nothing, silently adjusting the brace sling on her arm keeping her recently relocated shoulder in place. After a brief tense silence she got to her feet suddenly, slipping into an at ease stance as best as the brace would allow her.

"It's been an honor, ma'am, but I need to get back to my unit." Harding said in a quick clipped tone, "I'm pretty sure my XO is waiting to tear me a new one when I get back. If you'll excuse me, I should go and get it over with."

Ashley offered the woman a friendly smirk as she spoke, "Of course, as you were private. If you do get in trouble, tell your XO to contact me and I'll set things square."

"I'll let her know ma'am." The private nodded before quickly turning on her heels and walking out the door. Clearly this was a woman who was not interested in idle conversation.

"Well isn't she cheery." James said half-jokingly.

"Harding? I heard she used to be." The chubby red haired man spoke up.

"And you would know….?" James let the question hang in the air as he promoted the man.

"I tend to keep my ear to the ground." The man shot him a quick grin before holding out a hand, "Name's Charlie, or Chuck if you like. Most of my unit calls me Scuttlebutt Chuck, or SBC for short."

"James," Vega introduced himself as he shook Chuck's hand, "Didn't take you for the gossip type."

"What can I say, I'm a people person." Chuck grinned back.

"So you know Private Harding?" Ashley asked him from her position at the side of the bed.

"Not personally." Chuck clarified, "Served alongside her unit briefly."

"You know what happened to her?" James asked.

"The same as everyone. The war happened." Chuck said, "She's been like that every since she heard her wife died."

"And her wife as Asari, I bet." Ashley added.

"How'd you know?" Chuck asked.

"Just made sense." Ashley responded, "She seemed to take that fight very personally." James and Chuck nodded in quiet agreement, letting the sober silence linger for a moment.

"What about you man?" James finally turned to ask the other soldier, "There an Asari in your life?"

"Me? Nah, my wife was human." Chuck explained without missing a beat, "But I wasn't about to sit by and do nothing. If the ol' lady were there she would have jumped in without a thought. That woman had no qualms about jumping into any righteous fight. Would have been a disservice to her memory if I stayed out of it."

"Oh I hear ya." James nodded as he considered what the man said. When he spoke up again he did so cautiously, "Hit me if I'm off base here, but you seem to be handling her loss well, you know, by comparison."

"I've had time to grieve." Chuck admitted looking off in the distance as he recalled the events around his wife's death, "Don't get me wrong, still hurts. But it's been a year since the Reapers first hit Earth. She was stationed in California at the time. Choose to stay back to give the evacuating civilians as much time as possible to escape."

"Reminds me of my husband." Steve spoke up from his bed, his voice softer than before, "Robert chose to stay behind when Ferris Fields was hit by the Collectors. Took a long time just getting used to the fact that he was gone, took even longer before I could move on."

"Yeah, still miss the fuck out of Jaynie." Chuck nodded, acknowledging the familiar pain both men shared, "But she'd crawl back from the dead and kick my ass if she thought I was holding a candle for her. She made it clear many times that if anything happened to her, she'd want me to keep living my life. She's the reason I enlisted when the draft call went out. I wanted to make sure there was a life worth living, or die trying to make it happen."

"She sounds exactly like Robert then." Cortez said with a reminiscing smile, "I like to think we both did right by them today."

"If he was anything like my crazy ol' lady then you better believe we did." Chuck laughed, "Don't get a lot of chances to punch an asshole officer in the face and get away with it."

"Haha, yeah, I gotta admit, that was fun." James joined in the laughter.

"Yeah, laugh it up while you still can." Ashley gave them a friendly warning, "Still too early to tell if we got away with anything."

* * *

"What am I looking at, Lawson?" Hackett's gravely voice filled the med bay. He stood before the monitor next to the former Cerberus Operative who was in the middle of filling him in on all the updated intel regarding Shepard's condition.

"This is a high resolution visual model of a typical Reaper nanite." Miranda explained as she moved next to the imposing Admiral. "This is exactly the sort of invasive technology we've pulled from all Reaper troop constructs as well as almost all husk victims."

The image before them displayed detailed technical specifications around a generated model of the micro sized machine. It's central body looked reminiscent of some ancient sea life with numerous thick but versatile multi-jointed legs protruding from it. The great detailed imagery showed very deliberate tightly placed molecular arrangements which resulted in an eerily familiar shape.

"It almost looks like a Reaper." Hackett observed as he studied the miniature monster.

"Not surprising." Miranda commented, "For all their power, the Reaper's were hardly innovative in their design choices."

"So you're saying this is what's inside Shepard's body right now." Hackett said grimly.

"Perhaps there was once, but not anymore." Miranda said, "Now there's something completely different."

Keying a few quick commands into her terminal, Miranda brought up a new technical specification display. This time showing a very different generated model of another nanite where the Reaper version once was. The miniature machine was sleeker, with a deep black color. Its central body looked more like a thick teardrop shape, with its arms more fluidly shaped and uniformly placed around the central body.

"Well, it certainly looks impressive." Hackett said as he stared at the model critically, "Other than the color it almost looks like it could be Asari in origin."

"I have to wonder if perhaps there was some inspiration to that effect." Miranda said.

"Meaning?" Hackett prompted.

"These new nanites were built, not injected, inside Shepard's body." Miranda explained, "We know for a fact now that there was no other Reaper code left inside her body when these nanites began replicating themselves. Clearly they had no interest in perfectly duplicating the older tech. What fascinates to me is this is also not based on any of the Cerberus technology within her implants. This is an entirely new creation, based on the older available technology, but replacing it completely. The closest analogy would be an evolution of the prior Reaper based nanites."

"And you think Shepard herself is behind this evolution?" Hackett asked.

"Probably not consciously, but yes, I suspect at some level she's managed to guide the construction of these evolved nanites." Miranda confirmed. "Whatever the source of these new machines their high rate of construction has also resulted in a drastically increased rate of regeneration." Miranda walked over to the opposing wall of the med bay, standing next to the bed where Shepard was still lying unconscious.

One look and it was immediately obvious that Shepard's recovery was nothing short of miraculous. Hackett didn't get a chance to see her prior to the Commander's recovery, but looking at her now it was hard to believe she was ever injured at all. Her face was clear of all bandages now, her face free of scarring as she slept peacefully. Not a single outward sign remained to suggest that she was so near death not so long ago.

Once Hackett reached the opposite side of the bed, Miranda pulled back the sheet covering Shepard's body, just far enough to reveal the Commander's left arm. To Hackett it looked like there was absolutely nothing wrong with Shepard's arm, which he figured was likely the whole point.

"This arm didn't exist a week ago." Miranda explained, "Not just her arm, but her leg has been completely rebuilt by these nanites. And this is on top of all her other injuries."

"That's very impressive, Ms. Lawson." Hackett said without even a hint of sarcasm.

"It's also a little frightening." Miranda continued, "In order to achieve this level of reconstruction, the nanites required a vast amount of raw materials. And the rate at which those nanomachines devoured said raw materials can only be described as 'aggressive'. For some time we literally could not keep her feed bag filled. And that was just the start." Miranda reached over to a nearby stand and grabbed a piece of plastic from it, showing it off to the Admiral. "This is all that's left of the endotracheal tube we were using for her intubation."

There was clearly several inches of plastic completely missing from the end of the tube, Hackett noticed. At the end where this missing material was meant to be the tube simply ended, the plastic looking as if it had been dissolved at that point.

"This was deconstructed at the molecular level and used for source materials in Shepard's reconstruction." Miranda said, "The metal IV needles in her arm shared a similar fate. Nearly any foreign object these nanites had access to was broken down and used to rebuild her body. However it was not random, we ran tests with a variety of materials, only materials that could be used directly to rebuild her body were made use of. We've seen everything from a piece of steak to a chuck of Reaper ship hull plating get broken down and integrated into her body almost overnight."

"Wait, you're saying Shepard has a piece of a Reaper hull inside her?" Hackett demanded.

"Yes, from one of the dead Sovereign class warships." Miranda replied without missing a beat, "We were all equally surprised to discover it was so successful. But logically it makes sense. Reaper hulls, like the rest of their body, are made from a synthetically created hybrid of organic and inorganic material. And since Shepard's nanites are based on Reaper technology it would follow that they would be able to make use of it."

"How the hell were you even able to acquire a piece of Reaper hull plating to begin with?" Hackett asked intently.

"That would be Jack." Miranda admitted with a somewhat strained tone, "Apparently she managed to break off a piece during one of her … celebrations. I didn't ask for details. I made sure to sterilize the sample before using it."

"I'm curious, how did you manage to introduce a chunk of Reaper hull plating into Shepard's body?" Hackett asked.

"We didn't, we simply placed the hull piece against the growing stump of her arm and the nanites did all the work as they rebuilt the limb." Miranda admitted.

"That's … more than a little disconcerting, Lawson." Hackett said gravely, "Are you certain she's no danger to anyone else?"

"Surprisingly, and against all other logic, yes we are." Miranda began her explanation, "We've taken every precaution and ran every test we could. In the end, the nanites have effectively no presence beyond Shepard's own body. Even then they seem to be intelligently adaptive and very precise in their function. Despite their voracious appetite, these nano-machines haven't so much as scratched the cloth bed lining Shepard is sleeping on, for example." Miranda crossed her arms pausing for consideration before she continued, "At one point Dr. Chakwas even went so far as to stick her exposed fingers down Shepard's throat just to test if she could get infected. Despite the obvious viable biological components available, the nanites didn't touch her. Almost as if they recognized her and refused to take a bite. Every single scan of the Doctor's body show she has no foreign tech in her system whatsoever. She only just got out of quarantine, so we are quite certain she's safe."

"That was rather bold of the good doctor." Hackett commented.

"Chakwas was confident she would be safe." Miranda said, "Though I'm certain she was willing to sacrifice herself if it helped Shepard get better. Honestly I feel like we may have overdone it in that regard."

"Meaning what exactly?" Hackett asked.

"Meaning that Shepard's body has been more than just healed, it's gotten bigger." Miranda explained, "She's grown several inches taller, and her muscle density has increased proportionally. I'm can't be sure if that was a result of the added sustenance we provided during our examinations or if it was an intended effect of the nanites reconstruction efforts. Fortunately, whatever the cause, this minor growth spurt has seemingly reached its desired limit. In fact overall nanite activity has noticeably dropped just in the last hour. Which leads me to believe they've reached the end of their regenerative procedures."

"So you're saying Shepard's done healing?" Hackett clarified, "If that's the case it's no wonder you insisted on meeting in person immediately. Do you think she will wake up soon?"

"I certainly hope so." Miranda said, "Unfortunately there's still no way to be certain when she'll wake up, but I'm continuously monitoring her brain activity."

" _Admiral Hackett,_ " Whatever else there was to say on the topic was halted by EDI's sudden voice calling out from the ship's internal comm system. " _Forgive the interruption but there is a Captain Whittman here who insists on speaking with you._ "

"Tell the captain he can wait his damn turn." Hackett called back with an added edge of annoyance in his tone.

" _I attempted to do so, but he was rather insistent._ " EDI said diplomatically, " _He verbally forced his way past the crew and is on his way down there to meet you. Shall I lock him inside the elevator for you to deal with at your leisure?_ "

"Don't bother." Hackett groaned, "I'll deal with this myself." He turned his eyes towards Miranda as he added, "Until further notice, keep all this information confidential." Miranda merely nodded in understanding, keying in the commands to shut off all of the terminals in the med bay that could be displaying any information on Shepard's condition.

" _As you wish, he should be arriving at the door in five seconds._ " EDI informed them.

Exactly five seconds later the Med bay doors slid open to reveal a tall and very irate man in a dress uniform. Tightly cut and styled blonde hair was held under his pristine captain's hat which framed his handsome but average shaped face. He gave off the impression of an overly proud Navy man that probably only knew combat as a theoretical simulation to be waged from afar.

In other words, just the sort of officer Hackett had little patience for.

"Admiral Hackett!" The captain bellowed, clearly lacking for patience himself as he stormed across the med bay. He didn't even seem to notice Miranda as he nearly shoved her aside before standing across from Hackett on the opposite side of the bed. "I believe I've waited long enough. It's long past time to take decisive action on the matter of my formal complaint."

"Son, you're going to have to get used to waiting a great deal longer." Hackett barked back without so much as a flinch in the captain's direction, "As I've said before. There's nothing to take action on."

"Nothing? I'm sorry sir, but I respectfully disagree." Whittman insisted, "My men were assaulted and attacked in the middle of the ground base! By that disgraceful Williams kid and her entourage no less!"

A quiet alert notification on Miranda's omnitool caught the woman's attention, but otherwise went completely unnoticed by the two officers.

"From everything I've read it was more like a typical bar fight." Hackett corrected the captain, "We just won a damn war for our very survival. A bunch of soldiers got rowdy and blew off some steam. This isn't something worth wasting time over. Especially when we have more important matters to attend to right now."

"On the contrary Admiral." The Captain insisted, "It is precisely because we are such an important juncture in human history that we must hold these degenerate and violent soldiers and their friends accountable for their actions. They attacked my men first. Every single one of them must be arrested, and preferably incarcerated for a very long time!"

Another beep held Miranda's attention as she looked through the readings pouring into her omnitool. This time the data seemed urgent enough to speak up. "Admiral?"

"If you really want the guilty parties to be accountable for their actions then your crew must be held to the same standard." Hackett continued, clearly he was not about to be pressured whatsoever by this lowly captain. "Before you say anything, keep in mind we have documented evidence of your crew antagonizing Lieutenant Commander Williams and her friends prior to the fight. A fight they participated in fully. They deserve to share in equal part whatever punishment you want to give out."

"My subordinate was merely expressing his personal opinion." The captain insisted, "If Ms. Williams and her friends are so easily offended then they should find better methods of dealing with their issues than their typical criminally violent behavior." The added emphasis on the Williams name was intentionally disgusted.

"Admiral." Miranda attempted once again as the readings she was looking at became more and more interesting.

"Let me be perfectly blunt, Captain." Hackett instead spoke to Whittman with an intense level of authority in his voice, "Your men were every bit as stupid in this fight. If you continue to waste my time with this matter I will drag every single member of your crew involved in this through the mud of a full scale investigation and leave you and your ship grounded without leave until the situation is resolved to my satisfaction. Unless you enjoy the thought of being restricted to your quarters for the better part of a month I highly suggest you shut up and let this matter drop. Am I being clear?"

"... crystal, sir." Whittman begrudgingly responded. While he finally realized he wasn't going to get anywhere with the admiral, his pride apparently was just big enough to insist on getting in the final word, "But let me say, on the record, I find it a great disgrace to the uniform I wear proudly that so many men and women of the Systems Alliance would gladly see a fellow human suffer just to side with some commander's slutty blue alien mistress."

"DO NOT INSULT MY PEOPLE!" Shepard's voice filled the room suddenly. By the time anyone could register what was happening her fist had already connected against the captain's face. Consciousness had completely eluded Whittman long before he finally crumbled to the ground as a result.

Hackett for his part just looked at Shepard calmly, one eyebrow raised curiously at the sudden shift in the Commander's status. Shepard's eyes were slightly glazed over as if she wasn't entirely conscious while she took quiet but deep breaths. Her arm remained held up in a straight fist from where she - apparently on instinct - punched the captain earlier.

After a moment Hackett simply and quite casually turned his focus back on Miranda and asked, "You were trying to tell me something, Ms. Lawson?"

"Well, I was going to say that I think Shepard's waking up now." Miranda deadpanned, looking over the suddenly awake commander before her. "Hardly seems worth mentioning now."

"Yes, I see. Thank you Lawson." Hackett replied with the same straight tone before addressing Shepard directly. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Commander. How are you feeling?"

Slowly Shepard blinked her bright green eyes as she looked like she was trying to regain her bearings. She turned her head slightly as she lowered her arm, catching a glimpse of Miranda. "Hey, Miri, … did I die again?"

"Shockingly no, you did not." Miranda answered, "Just got really damn close."

"Oh." Shepard replied dumbly as her eyes turned back eventually her head turning to face Hackett, "So … d'we win?"

"Yes we did, Shepard." Hackett confirmed, "All thanks to you. Good work Commander."

"Oh." Shepard said turning her head forward once more, "Tha's nice." Her eyes rolled up slightly before closing as she slumped back onto the bed crudely, unconscious once more.

"I wouldn't worry about this, Admiral." Miranda said helpfully as she scanned over Shepard's current brain activity, "She's just sleeping normally right now. She should wake up again in a few hours."

"Good to know." Hackett said, "If you'll excuse me, there is no shortage of people who will need to be briefed officially regarding Shepard's return."

"Of course, Admiral." Miranda nodded.

"Oh and EDI please inform the security officer of my flagship to send some people down here to take care of the captain. Let him know the order comes from me personally." Hackett called out as he walked towards the room's entrance.

" _Message sent as requested, Admiral._ " EDI informed him.

"Thank you." Hackett said stepping past the threshold of the med bay, "And keep up the good work Ms. Lawson."

Miranda simply looked on as Hackett moved on with a purpose, as he always did, past the closing doors of the med bay. Meanwhile behind her the sounds of Shepard's loud snoring began to fill the air. At the very least she could be grateful there was no army of mechs attacking them this time.


End file.
